Blame whoever named Generation X.
Naturally, it's complicated.
Terminology and etymology
Douglas Coupland popularized the term
Generation X in his 1991 novel
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture.
The term
Generation X has been used at various times to describe alienated youth. In the early 1950s, Hungarian photographer
Robert Capa first used
Generation X as the title for a photo-essay about young men and women growing up immediately following
World War II. The term first appeared in print in a December 1952 issue of
Holiday magazine announcing their upcoming publication of Capa's photo-essay.
[7] From 1976 to 1981, English musician
Billy Idol used the moniker as the name for his
punk rock band.
[8] Idol had attributed the name of his band to the book
Generation X, a 1964 book on British popular youth culture written by journalists Jane Deverson and Charles Hamblett
[9][10]—a copy of which had been owned by Idol's mother.
[11] These uses of the term appear to have no connection to Robert Capa's photo-essay.
[7]
The term acquired a modern application after the release of
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, a 1991 novel written by Canadian author
Douglas Coupland; however, the definition used there is "born in the late 1950s and 1960s", which is about ten years earlier than definitions that came later.
[12][13][9][14] In 1987, Coupland had written a piece in
Vancouver Magazine titled "Generation X" which was "the seed of what went on to become the book".
[15][16] Coupland referenced Billy Idol's band Generation X in the 1987 article and again in 1989 in
Vista magazine.
[17] In the book proposal for his novel, Coupland writes that
Generation X is "taken from the name of Billy Idol’s long-defunct punk band of the late 1970s".
[18] However, in 1995 Coupland denied the term's connection to the band, stating that:
The book's title came not from Billy Idol's band, as many supposed, but from the final chapter of a funny sociological book on American class structure titled
Class, by
Paul Fussell. In his final chapter, Fussell named an 'X' category of people who wanted to hop off the merry-go-round of status, money, and social climbing that so often frames modern existence.
[19][15]
Author William Strauss noted that around the time Coupland's 1991 novel was published the symbol "X" was prominent in popular culture, as the film Malcolm X was released in 1992, and that the name "Generation X" ended up sticking. The "X" refers to an unknown variable or to a desire not to be defined.
[20][21][14] Strauss's coauthor
Neil Howe noted the delay in naming this demographic cohort saying, "Over 30 years after their birthday, they didn't have a name. I think that's germane." Previously, the cohort had been referred to as Post-Boomers, Baby Busters (which refers to the drop in birth rates following the baby boom in the western world, particularly in the U.S.[
where?]),
[22] New
Lost Generation,
latchkey kids,
MTV Generation, and the 13th Generation (the 13th generation since
American independence).
[8][20][17][23][24]