Most of the decades over the last century have had universally accepted names. There have been the Twenties, the Thirties, the Forties, the Fifties, the Sixties, the Seventies, the Eighties and the Nineties. Just reading through that list will no doubt have conjured up evocative thoughts of each decade (click on a few of those links to see if you agree with me). Each name acts as a useful label, a one-word summary of ten years, a convenient way to refer to a particular era in our past.
But we're now halfway through the first decade after the Nineties, the ten years from 2000-2009, and this decade doesn't have a name yet. Not a proper one, anyway. Sure some people have tried to call this decade the Noughties but, let's be honest, this name really hasn't been generally accepted. You just don't hear people taking about the Noughties in the same way as they do about the Nineties or all those other decades. Apparently this has something to do with the fact that Americans never use the word nought to describe zero (they just use zero) so the word Noughties doesn't stand a chance on a global scale. Calling this decade the 2000s doesn't work either because that describes a whole century, and other suggested names such as the zeroes or the nillies or the double 0s just sound either very wrong or very stupid.
But is this really a problem? We've survived a century without a proper nickname for the years from 1900-09 (even if dying monarchs have conveniently allowed us to call it the Edwardian era instead) and there's no shorthand for 1910-1919 either (unless you allow World-War-One-ish). So maybe we'll get by without a special name for 2000-2009, or for 2010-2019 too for that matter, and only revert to normal labelling conventions once the next lot of Twenties roll round. In fact it's quite liberating not being able to label the current decade because trends in society tend not to fit into nice convenient ten-year slots anyway (Thatcherism excepted). In the meantime let's just enjoy being halfway through this decade. This decade will do as a name for the time being.
