What Are the First Two Decades Called?Did you know that we just lived through two whole decades without managing to name them consistently? We don't think twice about using terms like the seventies, the eighties, and the nineties—but what comes next?
In recent years, the English speaking world has pretty much settled on a name for the period from 2000 to 2009, but there are regional variations. North America favors the term “the aughts,” while most other English speaking countries mostly use “the noughts” or “the noughties.”
However, the jury is still out on the name of the time span from 2010 to 2019. Suggestions abound, ranging from “the teens,” “the teenies,” and “the teensies” to “the tens,” “the tensies,” and even “the ten-sions.” Depending on context, it is also common to use terms like “the twenty-tens” or “the two-thousand-and-tens.” But none of them have so far secured enough support in everyday use to decide the race.
It may seem strange that we managed to let ten years fly by without having a clear understanding of what to call them. However, it is quite common for these things to be decided in hindsight. Time will tell which name we finally settle on.As an aside, I want to state here that I do not subscribe to the erroneous thinking that a decade should start with a year ending with a zero. To me, a decade should start with the year One, for examples, 1st Jan 2001, 1st Jan 2011 and 1st Jan 2021. The reason is simple: when you start counting whole numbers, do you begin with a Zero or a One?
Do you start your counting as "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc" or "0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, etc"? A Zero is nothing, zilch, elek, kosong, khong. You start counting with a physical One, not with a non-existent Zero. Groups of tens or hundreds should end with numbers followed by a Zero, or else you'll end up a number short. Likewise, the start of a decade, or indeed a millennium, should start with a year ending with a One, never a Zero.
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