THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Monday, March 18, 1996                 TAG: 9603150008
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Editorial 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   51 lines

A NAME FOR THE COMING DECADE THE AUGHITES

For easy reference, decades must have brief names. The seventies were followed by the eighties, which were followed by the nineties, which will be followed by the . . . what?

Two New York Times editorials in the eighties favored calling the 21st century's initial decade the ohs, since every year will have at least two zeros in it. The ohs is a wimpy name, however, implying that nothing much will happen in the century's first 10 years.

According to the current Atlantic Monthly magazine, no consensus was reached on what to call the first decade of this century. Some of the names used were the nineteen hundreds, the aughty-aughts and the new decade. Those names are too long for everyday use in our frenetic times.

Presumably the individual years in the coming decade will be referred to in conversations as aught one, aught two, aught three and so on, even as the years in the nineties are referred to as ninety-one, ninety-two, ninety-three and so on.

It seems to follow that the coming decade should be referred to as the aughties - the sum of the aught years.

We thought we'd be first to name the coming decade the aughties and were drunk with power until a regrettable piece of research revealed that a J. William Doolittle of Washington, D.C., suggested the aughties in a 1989 William Safire column. (Doolittle wondered if the decade after the aughties would be the teens, and if so, would 2011 and 2012 be the preteens.)

The aughties has the advantage of being easy to say. One drawback, of course, would be the media's temptation to label the decade the naughty aughties if anyone anywhere was caught having fun.

Two predictions:

1. During the aughties, the X generation will be succeeded by a generation that questions everything - the Y generation. (Presumably the generation after that - the Z's - will sleep a lot.)

2. Mr. Doolittle will go down in history as the man who named the first decade of the 21st century. If nothing much happens in the aughties, people will say, ``What did you expect from a decade named by a guy named Doolittle?''

Our hope is that future historians will label the 21st century's first decade the auspicious aughties. After the nervous nineties, we'll need a decade with things looking up. by CNB