We’re running out of alphabet.

The latest generation is Generation Z. They were born between 1995 and 2012 – according to one demographic primer. So, what do we call the generation born from 2013 on? Z+One? Do we go with an Excel naming scheme and call it Generation AA? Or should we just go back to all those unused letters of the alphabet. After all, we haven’t touched A to W yet. Thinking along those lines, Australian social researcher and author Mark McCrindle is lobbying for Generation Alpha. It’s a nice twist – we get to recycle the alphabet and give it a Greek flavor all at the same time.

Maybe the reason we short-sightedly started with the last three letters of the alphabet is that we’re pretty new at this. Before the twentieth century, we didn’t worry much about labeling every generation. And, to be honest, much of that labeling has happened retroactively. The Silent Generation (1925 – 1942) didn’t call themselves that right off that bat. Being Silent, they didn’t call themselves anything. The label wasn’t coined until 1951. And the G.I. Generation, who preceded them ((1901 – 1924), didn’t receive their label until demographers William Strauss and Neil Howe affixed it in 1991.

But starting around the middle of the last century, we developed the need to pigeonhole our cohorts. Maybe it’s because things started moving so quickly about that time. In the first half of the century we had the twin demographical tent poles of the two World Wars. In between we had the Great Depression. After WWII we had the mother of all generational events: the Baby Boom. Each of these eras brought a very different environment, which would naturally affect those growing up in them. Since then, we’ve been scrambling madly to keep up with appropriate labels for each generation.

The standard approach up to now has been to wait for someone to write a book about a generation, which bestows the label, and then we all jump on the bandwagon. But this seems reactive and short sighted. It also means that we get caught in our current situation, where we have a generation that remains unnamed while we’re waiting for the book to be written.

We seem hooked on these generation labels. I don’t think they’re going to go anywhere any time soon. Based on our current fascination with Millennials, we in the media are going to continue to lump every single sociological and technological trend into convenient generationally labeled behavioral buckets. So we should give this naming thing some thought.

Maybe we could take a page from the World Meteorological Organization’s book when it comes to naming hurricanes and tropical storms. They started doing this so the media would have a quick and commonly understood reference point when referring to a particular meteorological event. Don’t generations deserve the same foresight?

The World Meteorological Organization has a strict procedure: “For Atlantic hurricanes, there is a list of male and female names which are used on a six-year rotation. The only time that there is a change is if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate. In the event that more than twenty-one named tropical cyclones occur in a season, any additional storms will take names from the Greek alphabet.”

I like the idea of using male and female names. This got me thinking. Maybe we combine the WMO’s approach and that of the wisdom of crowds. Perhaps the male and female names should be the most popular baby names of that generation. In case you’re wondering, here’s how that would work out:

Silent Generation (1925 – 1942): The Robert and Mary Generation
Baby Boomers I (1946 – 1954): The James and Mary Generation
Baby Boomers II (1955 – 1965): The Michael and Lisa Generation
Generation X (1966 – 1976): The Michael and Jennifer Generation
Millennials (1977 – 1994): The Michael and Jessica Generation
Generation Z (1995 – 2012): The Jacob and Emily Generation
Generation ??? (2013 – Today) – The Emma and Noah Generation

The sharp sighted amongst you will have noticed two problems with this. First, some names are stubbornly popular (I’m talking about you Michael and Mary) and span multiple generations. Secondly, this is a very US-Centric approach. Maybe we need to mix it up globally. For instance, if we tap into the naming zeitgeist of South Korea, that would make the current generation the Seo-yeon and Min-jun Generation.

Of course, all this could be needless worrying. Perhaps those that affixed the Generation Z label knew something we didn’t.