Responses to “What lies between noughties and twenties?”

This is in continuation of the previous post “What lies between noughties and twenties?” of Dec 29. The question was posted on multiple sites and email, and it elicited quite a number of responses, though I got the maximum responses on LinkedIn.

Some readers said the next decade should be called simply ‘tenties’ since the succeeding ones are ‘twenties’, ‘thirties’, and so on. That sounds logical, if nothing else. There were also a few people who felt the coming ten years could be called 2010s.

One reader felt the whole question was irrelevant since the world would anyway come to an end in 2012! There was another who felt the coming decade should reflect the technological empowerment of people and should be called the ‘idecade’.

Someone evidently brimming with lots of optimism said, “After the first depression, it was the roaring twenties. How about the rollicking teens for this go round?”

There were many suggestions for ‘tennies’. It sounds like the name of a game. But that shouldn’t be a disqualification since the word ‘noughties’, which ultimately came to be accepted, did sound a bit mischievous.

Many seemed to be giving it a ‘human’ touch. “The coming decade will be of gadgets, and it’s the teenagers who excel in them,” said one reader. “So, the decade must have ‘teen’ or ‘tween’ in it.”

There were suggestions like ‘teens’ and ‘tweens’. But, the only problem, if one were to pitch for this, would be the confusion that would arise in a sentence like: “The teens of the teens.”

At the end of it all, the possible contenders narrowed down to: “tenties”, “teenies” and “tweenies”, besides the formal and obvious 2010s.

I have collated below all the 50 responses I received for the question till today.

1) Geoff Franklin wrote:
Please, anything but “teenies” or “tweenies”.

2) Abdul Rahim Hasan wrote:
But they say, it will all be over in 2012 🙂

3) Nancy Wright wrote:
The tweens?

4) DAVE MASKIN wrote:
The 2010s…

5) Tom Field wrote:
We’re emerging from the aughts and headed into the teens. Seems simple enough! 🙂

6) Rodney Ruff wrote:
Probably the “Tens” until 2013 and the “Teens” thereafter through 2019.

7) Nicky Leach, Writer/Editor wrote:
In England, they have moved from the Noughties to the Teensies!!

8) David Geer wrote:
The Noughties +1 ??
The Dime Plus Decade
The Tens

9) Sunita Shukla wrote:
Tweety Tweeties – I guess

10) Jason Schwartz wrote:
The tennies

11) Matthew C. Keegan wrote:
The tens sounds fine to me. By the way, can we all agree to pronounce 2010 as twenty-ten instead of two thousand ten? I’m all for saving a syllable!

12) Atilla Vekony wrote:
Sounds like it’s time to just call it the 2010s. Like we used to call decades prior to the decade-naming madness that started after the 1920s. We’re perfectly happy calling the 1790s the 1790s, the 1640s the 1640s, so let’s call the next decade the 2010s.

13) Judy B. Margolis, MA wrote:
I am calling this decade ‘the Tweens.

14) FRANK FEATHER wrote:
Twenteens..

15) Charlene Norman wrote:
The Decade of Hope? After the first depression, it was the roaring twenties. How about the rollicking teens for this go round?

16) Paul Mount wrote:
As the late, great David Foster Wallace predicted, naming rights will go to the highest bidder. So I’m guessing either “iDecade” or “Google Decade.”

17) Ida Durling wrote:
The Decade of Puberty…

18) Suma Ramachandran wrote:
Some really witty answers here!! Seriously, though, the media will find one or two labels and stick to it. I’m thinking “tweens” for less informal references (although that is already used pretty widely when referring to 12-year-old children, so it may cause some confusion.) “Twenty-tens” is likely to apply to the more formal stuff – and seems to be catching on already. It’s punchy, it’s formal and it’s accurate.

19) Bhalchandra Pai wrote:
20 somethings?

20) Manoj Gopinath wrote:
We could try Teens 🙂

21) Rajkumar S wrote:
tennis 🙂

22) Natesh Manikoth wrote:
Aren’t they called the teens in general?

23) jairaj k wrote:
how abt twenteens??

24) Mathew F.Koottunkal wrote:
How about the teens?! or maybe the ‘tweenies, as in what lies “between” the noughties and the twenties?!!!

25) jairaj k wrote:
or even scorteens or scorties???

26) aravindrenu wrote:
Maybe 2k-teens, to sound more techy..

27) Saikat Dasgupta wrote:

How about haughties, or more specifically for the bottle lovers (which we all are) droughties…

28) Saurabh Sharma wrote:
It can be called the teenties. in that all the “teen” years will fall in this decade…

29) Steve James wrote:
Looks like a 2 horse race between ‘Twenty-Tens’, and ‘Tens’. Twenty-Tens gets my vote.

30) Andy Tow wrote:
Can’t see that any variation that involves “teen” can work…. makes the first three years redundant! I can’t see much wrong with “Twenty Tens” (Nineteen Tens, Eighteen Tens, etc. all seem to work)

31) Jeff Crowe wrote:
How about we call it “the near future” until it’s about half way through…

32) Michael Cianci wrote:
The Next Decade.

33) Bob Halstead wrote:
Pradeep: “Decade” only refers to a period of 10 years, not specifically to a period of 10 years that begins with year 0 and ends with year 9. My point here is that “this decade” or “the decade just ended” can be ambiguous: Is it the 10 years that just ended, the 10 that just started, or some other 10 years we’re in the middle of? Generally, you should avoid relative dating whose meaning changes with the passage of time (“today” refers to a different day today from what it did yesterday). Also, I recommend avoiding cutesiness: no tweenies, teenies, or other such. Go (as others recommended) with “the twenty-tens” or “the 2010s”. For the decade now ending, “the first decade of 2000” (“the 2000s” is too broad) or “the first decade of the twenty-first century”. That may be a bit long, but how many times are you really going to need to use it in any one piece?

34) Manny Otiko wrote:
I’m going for the 10s or the 2010s.

35) Wallace Jackson wrote:
Tenzenia.

36) Paula Cohen wrote:
The first decade of the 20th Century was called the “oughts,” and actual years at that time (and probably up until the 1950s – 60s and even later), were frequently spoken of as “ought-six” or “ought-nine,” rather than “oh-six” or “oh-nine.” The second decade was called the “teens,” as in “back in the teens,” or “back in the nineteen-teens.” Then came the “twenties,” the “thirties,” and so on. I see no earthly reason why we can’t use the same designations in this century.

37) Paula Cohen added the following clarification:
@ Charlene Norman
Charlene, the Great Depression didn’t start until the 1930s, and was preceded by the stock market crash of October 1929…which brought a swift and fatal end to the Roaring Twenties, which, in any case, would have been technically over in another two months. No, I wasn’t there are the time, but my parents and grandparents had lots of stories…

38) Swarna wrote:
Tenteens!

39) George Mathew wrote:
Unities!

40) Bhaskaran wrote:
TenTeens..

41) Korula wrote:
I have wondered many times as to how we can ask a simple question as “Etthraametthe president aanu President Clinton?” in English. Have fun.. Kids between 13 and 20 are called teens and the ones between ten and 13 are the Tweens… mebbe the answer lies somewhere here..

42) Vini wrote:
I don’t have a suggestion but will call the next decade tenties or decaties..whatever you and others over here would like to term it..
When I was in high school, I remember one whole week we were discussing this question.. how do you ask Rajiv Gandhi Indiaude ethramathe pradhana manthri aanu in English. Finally someone came up with this…What is the position of Rajiv Gandhi in the chronological order of Indian Prime Ministers? chronological order can also be replaced with successional list. So maybe we can ask… What is the chronological position of Bill Clinton among the Presidents of the United States?

43) Chacko wrote:
It’s the TEENIES man!

44) Osty Lab wrote:
Seventies, eighties, nineties, TENies

45) Reshma wrote:
That made for an insightful reading Pradeep!and yes… we are at a loss for words!…

46) Decader wrote:
Excellent question, Sir. My vote goes to Tennees to describe the decade we’re stepping into.

47) Yam wrote:
Tennees. Sounds cul,gr8. 🙂

48) B A Rao wrote:
I think tenties is correct because ties is common for other decades.

49) B S Raghavendra Rao wrote:
In the first instance the problem of naming the first ten years between 2010-19 seems to be ipsofacto ticklish,and when I scratched my head to know the next block of 10 years in the period 2010-2019 to coin a word in the english language,as we did when the year 2000 ushered in and called it as Y2K,and as the editor has suggested to know the first 10 years in the range of the period 2010-2019, we can conveniently coin it as tennees or in linguistic terms as Y2K+10 to Y2K+19,the latter may seem to be absurd?
My knowledge about naming the next block of ten years between 2010-2019 in coining the same in english language is restricted to the above suggestion.

50) B Rajaram wrote:
The next decade will be for the man’s search for alternate energy source and will be dominated by the energy crisis and environmental pollution. A real threat to our way of life is looming ahead.To save 40% of energy consumption on the planet by replacing the same with that from gravity, an eco-friendly and eternal system of transportation , financially viable and ready to implement too,as detailed at http://www.atrilab.com will be the focus I believe.Since gravity will be the focus and gravitons is the equivalent of electrons, to get tens, we may name the decade as “gravitens”.

(A version of this article appeared in The Times of India, Bangalore, on January 1, 2010.)