What's in a name? Just the reputation of the next generation - Indianapolis Star

A frantic race to name the next generation of American consumers may be nearing the finish line.

The winner could walk off with fame, fortune -- and way cool bragging rights.

But exactly what do you call a generation of techno-junkies? How about Generation Wii -- for the wildly popular home video game console? Or, perhaps, the iGeneration -- with a wink and nod to Apple's iPod and iPhone? Both are in the running. So are a bunch of other tech-drenched monikers, including Gen Tech, Digital Natives and, of course, Net Gen.

"Everyone wants to be the first to come up with the name," says Cheryl Russell, dubbed the goddess of demography at New Strategist Publications, who is one of several with claims to have coined the term iGeneration.

Those positioning themselves to crown the next generation with its name include everything from marketing specialists to demographic experts to trade publications to trend gurus. Since the early 1900s, we've gone in roughly two-decade-long socio-groupings, from the GI Generation to the Silent Generation to baby boomers to Gen Xers to Millennials. Whatever you call it, the still-forming generation of young folks whose birth dates roughly begin around 1995 will be the technically savviest ever.

Naming it, however, will require an unusual combination of science, art and, perhaps, luck.

"You don't wear a lab coat to name a generation," says Scott Hess, vice president of insight at Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU).

"No one knows who will name the next generation," says Neil Howe, who, along with his deceased co-author and business partner, William Strauss, is widely credited with naming the Millennials, a generation he figures spans from about 1982 to 2004. Millennials, he says, lived during a huge cultural change in how to nurture children. It was the era of cocooning and overprotected kids.

And, arguably, he has early dibs in to name the next generation. His company sponsored a website contest in 2005, and folks voted overwhelmingly for the "Homeland Generation." That was not long after 9/11. One fallout of the disaster was a nation that felt more safe staying home.

Jean Twenge, a psychology professor, generational writer and mother of three young girls, says that in 2006, she used the term "iGen" in a brief reference in a book she'd written. At that time, there was no iPhone or iPad. But there was an iPod and, yes, an iMac computer.

But Hess, whose specialty at TRU is youth research, has his own moniker for the next generation: Post Gen.

By that, Hess means, this is a generation that's arriving on the scene immediately following a number of culturally seismic events. Post-recession. Post-Obama election. Post-tsunami. Post-9/11. Post-Millennial. "It will be defined more by what came before it than what comes after it," Hess says.

Even the trade magazine Advertising Age has planted a stake in the generational naming mix, favoring the iGen name.