Xennials

Xennials, also called Xillenials, are a social cohort encompassing people born on the cusp of or during the later years of Generation X and the early years of the Millennials generation.

Many researchers and popular media use birth years from 1977 to 1983, though some extend this further in either direction. Xennials are described as having had an analog childhood and a digital young adulthood. Xennials are almost exclusively the children of baby boomers and came of age during a rapidly changing period that was the 1990s.

In 2020, Xennial was added to the Oxford Dictionary of English. It was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2021: Xennial, n. and adj.: "A person born between the late 1970s and early 1980s, after (or towards the end of) Generation X and before (or at the beginning of) the millennial generation, and typically regarded as exhibiting characteristics of both of these generations"

Etymology and birth years

Xennials is a portmanteau blending Generation X and Millennials to describe a "micro-generation" or "cross-over generation" of people born between the mid- to late 1970s and the early to mid-1980s. Other terms, such as the Star Wars Generation, the Oregon Trail Generation, and Generation Catalano have been proposed.

Xennials was coined by freelance writer Sarah Stankorb in a September 2014 article in GOOD magazine by Stankorb and then-GOOD Magazine staff writer Jed Oelbaum. Good has called Xennials "a micro-generation that serves as a bridge between the disaffection of Gen X and the blithe optimism of Millennials."

Dan Woodman, a professor of social and political sciences at Melbourne University in Australia, said he "inadvertently" helped popularise the term Xennial when journalist Rachel Curtis asked him whether it would make sense to cut the generations differently.