What's in a name?

Humbug or not, Happy New Year! everybody. In fact, Happy New Decade.

Not strictly, of course. Just as the twentieth century didn't end until the last day of 2000, so the first decade of the twenty-first century won't end until the last day of 2010. But only clueless geeks care about nitpicking stuff like that. (Which is why I myself point out the technically correct date to everyone at every opportunity.)

Whatever the technicalities, we all "know" that we are now beginning a new decade, just as we all "knew" on January 1, 2000, that we were beginning a new century. But what shall we call these first two decades? From the last century, we know all about the roaring 20's, the depression 30's, the apathetic 50's, the hippy 60's, etc. But what simple word can be used to describe decades beginning with "0" and "1."

Actually -- I have on good authority -- a century ago most people called the 1900-09 decade the "aughts." "Aught" being a word synonymous with zero, and familiar from old stories where some elderly geezer leans back in his chair and reminisces: "That was a bad one, it was. Yes sir. The Great Blizzard of 19-aught-6." Parenthetically, "naught" means exactly the same thing as "aught," although one might suppose it a contraction of "not aught." And yet you never hear of an old fool ranting on and on about the great blizzard of 19-"naught"-6. This, my friends, is attributable to "fashion," and no rational explanation should be sought.

Obviously, then, it thus makes perfect sense -- and is in full accord with precedent -- to call the decade just completed the "aughts." The "Awesome Aughts"? Or "Awful Aughts"? Take your pick, depending on your own temperament, but I'm not aware of any such adjective attached by our twentieth century forebears to "aughts." They may just have been on to something. And if "aughts" sounds too archaic or hard to spell, let's just call them "the Bush-Cheney years" (or maybe "Cheney-Bush years"), and leave it at that. Which is to say "awful," and which is what I suspect we'll end up calling them anyway.

But I digress. I really meant to discuss the upcoming decade, the one we've just started (although you and I can secretly agree that it doesn't really start until 2011). Here I find no precedents. I've never read or heard of anyone calling the years 1910-19 the "teens"¹ or the "tens." And I suspect I know why.

World War I began about half-way through the decade. The war ended one era and introduced a new one. It sharply divided the decade into two segments: the pre-war years, which in America were really part of Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Era that that began at the outset of the "aughts," and the war years which ended Progressivism in this country and pushed our society down a slippery slope into the infamous "Roaring 20's." In Britain, the pre-war years were just a continuation of the Edwardian era (on that side of the pond, they do tend to identify eras more with reigns than with decades); and the war years -- which began in 1914 in Britain, rather than 1917 as here -- which led directly into that unpleasantly messy transitional period that Britain experienced in the 20's and 30's. So to both the British and the American publics, the "teens" didn't really exist as an independent decade, but as the tail end of one decade and the introduction to another.

Barring an unforeseen disaster, the coming decade will not be so bifurcated. So what should we call it? And what will future generations call it? I suppose, most logically, simply the "teens," but our society has ways of spontaneously coming up with terms that no one could have predicted, so who knows? And that's my answer to the question posed by this essay: Who knows?²

I will stick my neck out with an unrelated prediction, however. I'll bet that by 2013, we will stop using the awkward term "two thousand thirteen," and will simply say "twenty thirteen." (Remember, you read it here first.)
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¹(1-2-10) Although, embarassingly, I read such a reference to the upcoming decade in this morning's New York Times financial section!

²(1-2-10) Even more embarrassingly, this afternoon's mail brings the 1-4-10 issue of The New Yorker, whose lead comment under "Talk of the Town" is entitled "What Do You Call It." The comment discusses the issue of the "aughts," but of course does so far more eruditely than could I. The writer (Rebecca Mead) observes that "aught" is a nineteenth century corruption of "naught," summarizes the highs and the lows of the past decade, and concludes that to call the past decade the "aughts" pleases no one, and that the decade remains "an orphaned era that no one quite wants to own, or own up to.

So I'm not The New Yorker. So screw it. Sure, you're far better off reading their writers. But then, I don't charge you $5.99 per copy either.