Nick Names for Generations

The silent generation is my PIL's generation. They are in their early-mid 80s. The one before that is The Greatest Generation. Not sure why they are called that.

Not sure if there is anything before the greatest generation. Maybe we are then talking eras rather than generations? Maybe someone knows.

This is US based notinthemanual but I think it answers your questions.

www.thoughtco.com/names-of-generations-1435472#:~:text=The%20History%20of%20Naming%20Generations.%20Historians%20generally%20agree,the%20brunt%20of%20service%20during%20World%20War%20I.

Our youngest affectionately calls us 'the fossils'

I was a 'War baby'. These were children born between 1939 and 1946 (1947 is the start of the Baby Boomers).

Throughout our childhood into early adulthood, we were discussed and studied by that group name.

Thank you, Alegrias2 . That was exactly what I was looking for.

I was born 1945 and was told that was the start of the baby boomers when I applied for university as they had put the entry requirements up at the ones I applied to I don’t know if that was in general or just certain ones
So perhaps the dates have been moved in more recent times but that’s what happened to me in 1963 Moica

But the war didn't end until Spetember 1945, so if you were born in 1945 you were a war baby.

I have always understood that Baby Boomers start in 1947 because that was then, as the men returned from war service there was a huge increase in the birth rate. 800,000 children were born in 1945,. Over 1 million in 1947, a 20% increase. It was 1952 before births returned to the 1945 figure.

OceanMama

The silent generation is my PIL's generation. They are in their early-mid 80s. The one before that is The Greatest Generation. Not sure why they are called that.

I wonder if the greatest generation were those born during the ‘Great War’?

Can’t come up with an explanation for the silent generation

I always believed baby boomers are those born in 1946, I was born nine months after the end of the war.
When I started school there were about 42 to 45 children in the class.
We had large numbers of fifteen and sixteen year olds leaving school at the same time so further education saw a rise in class sizes.

In books of the era, you read of those born at the turn of the 19/20 century as being Bright Young Things (although I think that only referred to the wealthier ones).
I think that all of these labels are dismissive - even the nicer ones, they represent lazy thinking and stereotypes.
One of the worst was Superfluous Women - but of course they had the last laugh - so many of us saw them being nurses, teachers, civil servants, public figures and paving the way for a change in attitude.

But they were not 'Bright Young thing's until the 1920s. They were the generation who reached adulthood just after WW1 so knew (or thought they knew) that they would not be called up at 18 to fight and die.

Of course they couldn't know what was to happen in 1939, so that they did their fighting in their 40s.

Harrigran you are right about 1946 and I am wrong about 1947.

Monica I tried to get into Uni in 1963 and 64 and was told the criteria had changed because of baby boomers

I was born 1946, and originally that generation was known as The Bulge, due to the number of children in school from 1051 onwards

yggdrasil, I had forgotten about The Bulge. I can remember my secondary school, suddenly going from 2 stream to 3 stream and losing our Gym and one of our science labs to find space for extra classrooms, when the 46/47 years came through.