There is no official group in charge of naming generations, but theorists Neil Howe and William Strauss were among the first to name the different generations in their 1991 book, “Generations.” They are credited with naming the Millennials.
"We thought that an upbeat name would be good because of the changing way they were being raised. They would be the first to graduate high school in the year 2000, so the name millennial instantly came to mind," Howe told
NPR in 2014.
Canadian author Douglas Coupland gets the credit for coining, or at least popularizing, the term Gen X — in reference to people born between 1965 and 1980 — in his 1991 book, “Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture.”
Gen Z is thought to have gotten its name for being two generations after Gen X.