What did people in the 1900s call the decade in which they lived?
At the end of the column, after concluding that the people at the turn of the 20th century were forced into circumlocutions to describe their decade and foreseeing (quite rightly) the same problem looming for us in this decade, Cecil writes:
I’d advise him to lengthen that nap and arrange for a wake-up call in 2020. Unless, of course, he’s aware of some Wondrous Name for the second decade of a century?
The teens?
Some referred to the first decade as “around the turn of the century.” Others were more specific and said “after the turn of the century” or “shortly after the turn of the century.” This was how my father referred to the period during which he was born – 1906.
At the time that it was happening, I don’t know how people referred to it. Did they really have a need to label it? There doesn’t currently seem to be a big demand beyond “at present” or “during this first decade of the new century.”
During the Twentieth Century, the second decade took care of itself in the long run. By the 1920’s, I’m assuming that people said “before the war,” “during the war,” and “after the war.” After 1939 and 1941, they may have said, “before the Great War” or before World War I, etc.
I have no cite for this. I’m speculating based on what happened after WWII.