who names the generations? Why did we start using the phonetic alphabet? Why is it gonna be gen beta and not bravo?
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Years ago (over 10ya) I looked up where the generation names came from, I guess it was some Wikipedia page saying these names were created by some big marketing agency.
They were looking for ways to split the population into groups, so they could plan where to spend money and get the best results, according to the product and target group.
Obvious groups would be gender, location, education, salary… And age. Hence they divided the population into age groups and named each group. This took place in the 70s, so it was likely older boomers running it. They named their grandpa’s the greatest generation, their parents the silent, themselves baby boomers, and the kids of the time were named generation X, as in X is the unknown in math. To be defined.
Nothing big happened to name generation X, so the name stayed. The next generation was named Y because that’s what comes after X. So is Z.
Out of Latin alphabet letters, someone had the idea to use the Greek alphabet, not the phonetic. I have no idea who or why greek letters.
The theory behind social generations is that people who come of age roughly in the same years have a unique view of the world.
I’m xenial, late X. I find it difficult to connect to people as old as older X or younger millennials, and that’s not a lot of difference – the world just changed fast enough for the experience growing up be very different.
Also, these names and dates they refer to are western centric, they don’t make much sense for most of the world.
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