Name for the Past Decade
Posted in Unfounded Speculation
on January 13th, 2010 by
Stephen DeGrace
We have developed a cultural habit of chopping up time into decades and referring to general trends and events, such as music, fashion and changing social and political beliefs, by decades or parts of decades. How valid this particular device is is a whole separate question, but it's a deeply ingrained habit for practically everyone and it is virtually certain that we will continue to do it. So what are we going to call the decade we have just left behind (by most common measures - according to pedants, the new decade doesn't start until next year, but the pedants enjoy only very weak cultural influence). In this post, I make my guess 
.
It is easy to refer to the 30's, the 60's, the 80's or the 90's... we virtually never refer to the period between 1900-1919 in the fashion because it presents linguistic difficulties, but those decades occurred before most people now living were born, and people felt very little need to ever refer to them. However, now we're back around again to the first decade of the new century and both the cultural predilection to refer to time in decades and the need to refer to the decade just passed are very much in place.
The preference of the educated elites seems to focus around the "Naughts," or the "Aughts." I would argue that neither of those terms will ever catch on.
First of all, in the English language, change and innovation are driven by the lower classes of society and education, not the upper. We emulate and adopt terms from poor urban culture and spurn our literati. There is a significant anti-intellectual streak in the culture of the English-speaking world, particularly in that world's centre of gravity, the United States. This is probably a bad thing. Nevertheless, people will tend to avoid emulating those perceived as intellectuals, rather than immitate them.
Secondly, the words "naught" and "aught" have no currency in the day to day speech of any major English dialect spoken today. People know basically what they mean, especially those with some education, but no one would use them in conversation or even in writing. They sound and look stilted. They are cute and old-fashioned, I will given them that, but they feel unnatural, and for that reason I would argue they will never gain a significant foothold.
Finally, the fact that "naughts" and "aughts" are competing with each other, while contending with all that other baggage, pretty much seals the fate of both.
Remember when the toonie came out and there was this whole excited debate among the chattering classes about what we were going to call it, given the way the name "loonie" had spontaneously developed... a lot of options were floated. My favorite was "doubloonie," which was frankly awesome (although way too precious to catch on). But anyone should have been able to predict that "toonie" would be the winner - even though that was not necessarily a favorite of educated word-lovers at the time.
Back to the decade, "zeros" would be a bit better, but not much. I would go so far as to say it has an outside chance, especially if it somehow managed to attact some popular users. On one hand, "zero" is a common English word with real currency, it is short and snappy, and it doesn't carry any intellectual odor. On the other hand, unlike all the other decade names, you don't actually say the word "zero" when you're saying the name of the year. That's part of what makes the 80's the 80's, for example, you say the word "eighty" every time you refer to a year from the 80's. Therefore, you have to employ some thought in order to think of calling the decade the zeros, and that is the factor that will kill the term right there.
Here is my prediction, for the record. I think we will call the decade just past the "two thousands," written 2000's. It think this will win over the zero-based terms even though it is more verbose and even though it presents a potentially annoying and/or troublesome confusion with the common century name. I mainly think this one will be the winner because of all the options it requires the least thought.
Every time you say a year from the 2000's, you say the words "two thousand." I predict we will fall into saying twenty-ten for 2010, twenty-twenty-two for 2022, etc., so it will be the only decade of this century for which that will commonly be true. It will just be natural to refer to the "two thousands," and I expect it will start naturally and spread virally, no matter how reviled, or even especially if it is reviled. We may hate ourselves for saying it, but we'll say it. It won't take that far into 2010 for the difference in the way the years are said to stand out and for the decade term to fall into place.
That will create a direct clash with the practice of referring to centuries as 1800's, 1900's, etc., which will create a degree of discomfort with the term, so that the last decade may simply be referred to less, depending on the work, to avoid the whole problem. It may also push people into using century terms like "21st century" more. Ambiguity will have to be sorted out by backtracking/explanatory text or by context.
So there, I am on record
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