老外常说的Millennials，Generation X，Baby Boomers啥意思？

汉语中用80后、90后、00后指在某一时期出生的人群，英语中也有这样的词汇，例如，Millennials指1981-1996年间出生的人，Generation X指1965-1980年间出生的人。你知道这些称呼是怎么来的吗？

BABY BOOMERS“婴儿潮一代” (1946-1964)

Calling a dramatic increase in the number of children born a “baby boom” dates to the 19th century. In 1941, an issue of LIFE Magazine—discussing the increasing birthrate due to older couples having children after the Great Depression and the many marriages that came about because of the peacetime draft of 1940—proclaimed that “the US baby boom is bad news for Hitler.”

“婴儿潮”指出生人口急剧增加，这种说法可以追溯到19世纪。1941年，《生活》杂志的一篇文章称，“美国婴儿潮对希特勒来说是坏消息。”这篇文章谈到，年长夫妇在大萧条后生育子女以及1940年的和平草案后许多人成婚，导致出生率上升。

The children who would come to be known as Baby Boomers, however, wouldn’t be born for a few more years as soldiers returned home from the war and the economy “boomed.”

然而，又过了几年，等战争结束士兵们返回家园，经济开始“繁荣”后，那些被称为“婴儿潮一代”的孩子才出生。

Although the children born from 1946 to 1964 get the name Baby Boomers, that phrase wouldn’t appear until near the end of the generation. In January 1963 the Newport News Daily Press warned of a tidal wave of college enrollment coming as the “Baby Boomers” were growing up.

尽管在1946-1964年出生的孩子被称为“婴儿潮一代”，但这一短语直到这一代快结束时才出现。1963年1月，《纽波特纽斯日报》警告道，随着“婴儿潮一代”长大，将掀起一股大学入学潮。

Oddly, an alternate name for people born during this time was Generation X; as London's The Observer noted in 1964, “Like most generations, ‘Generation X’—as the editors tag today’s under 25s—show a notable lack of faith in the Old Ones.”

奇怪的是，在这一时期出生的人还有另外一个名字，“X世代”；正如伦敦《观察家报》1964年所指出的，“和其他世代的人一样，‘X世代’（编者注：当今25岁以下的年轻人）明显不够相信神。”

GENERATION X “X世代”(1965-1980)

That comment in The Observer was in reference to a then-recently published book called Generation X by Jane Deverson and Charles Hamblett. A few years later, Joan Broad bought a copy at a garage sale, her son found it, and he fell in love with the name.

《观察家报》的言论是参考了当时简•戴佛森和查尔斯•哈姆布赖特出版的一本名为《X世代》的书。几年后，琼•博德在一个跳蚤市场买了这本书。她的儿子看到并爱上了这个名字。

That son was Billy Idol, and according to his memoir, Dancing with Myself, “We immediately thought it could be a great name for this new band, since we both felt part of a youth movement bereft of a future, that we were completely misunderstood by and detached from the present social and cultural spectrum. We also felt the name projected the many possibilities that came with presenting our generation’s feelings and thoughts.” The band Generation X would begin Billy Idol’s career.

这个男孩就是比利•爱多尔，根据他的回忆录《自己跳舞》，“我们立刻想到这个名字可能非常适合这个新乐队，年轻的我们对未来感到渺茫，被完全误解且脱离了当下的社会和文化。我们也感觉到这个名字投射了许多可能展现我们这一代人的情感和思想的可能性。”乐队“X世代”开启了比利•爱多尔的音乐生涯。

But the name Generation X wouldn’t become associated with a wide group of people until 1991. That's the year Douglas Coupland’s Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture was released. The book became a sensation for its ability to capture early '90s culture and, although it didn’t coin the words, helped popularize a range of terms as diverse as McJob and pamphleting—and a name for an entire generation.

但直到1991，“X世代”才与一个广泛群体联系到一起。那一年，道格拉斯•柯普兰的《X世代：速成文化的故事》出版了。这本书因充分展现了20世纪90年代早期的文化而轰动一时，尽管“X世代”这个词不是它的发明，但这本书让各种各样的表述流行起来，例如McJob（普通乏味而又低薪的工作），pamphleting（短论）和对一代人的称呼“X世代”。

MILLENNIALS 千禧一代 (1981-1996)

What comes after Generation X? Generation Y, obviously. That was the logic behind several newspaper columns that proclaimed the coming of Generation Y in the early '90s. But as psychologist Jean Twenge explained to NPR regarding the failure of “baby busters” as a term to describe Generation X, “Labels that derive from the previous generation don't tend to stick.”

“X世代”之后是什么？显然是“Y世代”。这是几十家报纸专栏的逻辑，他们将90年代初出生的人称为“Y世代”。但是心理学家珍•温格在接受NPR采访时提出，考虑到无法用“生育低谷儿”来指代“X世代”，“从上一代人衍生来的标签往往不能持久”。

Instead, in 1991 authors Neil Howe and William Strauss wrote Generations, which included a discussion about the Millennials. According to Forbes, they felt that as the oldest members of this generation were graduating high school in 2000—and everyone was focusing on the coming date—Millennials seemed a natural fit.

相反，在1991年，作家尼尔•豪依和威廉姆•施特劳斯的著作《世代》中提到了“千禧一代”。据《福布斯》报道，他们认为，这一代人中年纪最大的将在2000年高中毕业，而所有人都在关注新世纪的到来，因此“千禧一代”似乎是很恰当的称呼。