Antedating of "Yalie"

[sagehen]

>John Baker writes:
>        As for the suggestion that names for decades get coined only after
>the completion of the decade, it's inconsistent with our experience in the
>nineties, eighties, seventies, and so forth.  I suppose it's possible that
>names like the Naughty Nineties could come after the fact - certainly a
>name like that cannot precede the decade, as nineties by itself can.
>~~~~~~~~~
I wonder, though, how far into each decade we were when we began to refer
to present circumstances as "the eighties," &c.  I think for now the
novelty of the  twenty-first century is what strikes us first when we
locate ourselves in time. A designation for the first decade may really not
be needed for a while.
We tend to speak of the early years of the twentieth century, not by decade
but by  reference to WWI.
A. Murie