Danielle in Los Angeles, California, wonders: If we call the 1960s the Sixties, what will we call the decade we’re now in? And will the next decade be the 2020s? How do these names get decided anyway? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Who Decides Decade Names?”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hey, this is Danielle. I’m calling from Los Angeles, California.
Hey, Danielle. Thanks for calling. What can we do for you?
Here is my question. When did we start nicknaming decades by their 10th place? For example, the 1920s is known as the 20s or the 1960s of the 60s. Do we do this in the 19th century or in centuries before? And if so, and if the past is any indication, will we see the 2020s be referred to as the 20s? And how will we make the distinction between these 20s and the 20s in the past?
Danielle, what got you to wondering about that?
We’re kind of in this weird period where we don’t really know what to call this decade. And I feel like there hasn’t been much consensus about it. And I was thinking about the future as well.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
I do know that they did go by decades in the 1800s, in the 19th century. So you will see in old newspapers, they’ll talk about the 1870s or the 1890s or the 1830s or what have you. You can just find it in old newspapers, no problem. Prior to that, I’ve never seen it. I’ve looked, but it’s hard. But I think what you probably would need is personal letters, wouldn’t you say, Martha? That probably is where you’re really going to get that casual speech. How else will you get that documentation?
Yeah.
So people have been abbreviating it because we naturally round up to 10 or round down to 10, right? 10 fingers, 10 toes. We like round numbers as a species. I think every language that I’ve ever studied, their number system whatsoever, they like to round. They approximate. And some approximate a heck of a lot more than others. So, yeah, it’s been going on for at least 100 plus years, 150 years, 200.
All right.
Yeah.
Is that it?
That’s all you wanted?
Well, no, I was wondering how we make the distinction between, you know, the decade that’s coming up and the 1920s. Because I feel like we kind of refer to the 20s as, you know, the roaring 20s. And I don’t know exactly what characteristic we’ll define this next decade, but before we know that, will we be referring to it as the 20s? As we did say in the 90s when we were saying things like, it’s the 90s.
Right, or the gay 90s from the 19th century. But that’s a good question. Is this set of 20s going to be roaring or is it going to be roaring at each other? A lot of ink has been spilled on this. This comes up so often, even in linguistic circles, because it’s a fun bar talk, really, as a linguist or a lexicographer, to guess what’s going to happen to language. And frankly, it’s a crapshoot. You don’t really know. You don’t know it until it’s over. And there’s no one person or organization that has a say in it. It’s just whatever catches the world’s fancy, whatever becomes faddish and sticks. It seems like nothing really stuck with the first decade.
Right.
Yeah, exactly. Nothing did. Although what’s interesting is people kind of call it the 2000s and they don’t mean the millennium. They mean just that first 10 years. And one other thing that’s happening, this is the strongest prediction that I’ve heard. And I think there’s a lot of sense to it. We have this great era of 20 something. So 2020, the decade of 2020s is probably going to end up being the nickname of the 2020s.
Right.
It’s just too perfect. It’s about perfect vision. It’s got rhyme. It’s got repetition. The 2020s. People are just going to call it, probably going to call it the 2020s. I think we had the roaring 20s in the 20th century. I think in the 21st century, we’re going to have the hot 20s. I don’t think you can call it anything else but the hot 20s because of global warming.
Oh, okay.
And whatever else is going on.
Maybe.
The toasty 20s. How about the toasty 20s? But these things are settled well after the fact. Some decades, for example, nobody calls the 1880s anything commonly, as far as I know. There’s some decade names that don’t really stick. The only ones that I know that stuck in the 1900s were the me decade, the roaring 20s, and maybe the, that’s it, pretty much the only ones I can think of. The 60s are just kind of known as the 60s, aren’t they?
So clearly, Danielle, what you’re going to need to do is call us in about 20 years.
Right.
And we can check in and just.
Well, hopefully we’ll have reached a consensus by then.
All right.
Well, thanks for your call, Danielle.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, thank you. Take care. Big fan of the show. Have a good evening. Bye-bye. Appreciate it. Bye-bye.
