It's officially the naughties.

When I first asked the question back in July 2005 about the lack of an accepted name for this decade following on the heels of the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties, I never thought that the lack of an official moniker for the naughties would still be continuing with less than a week remaining until ones replace zeroes in the third digit on our calendar headings.

The Washington Post confirms the continuing uncertainty about the name in an article today by Michael S. Rosenwald today titled "21st century's first decade is slipping away without leaving its name":

"Dictionary editors, linguists and even radio DJs say we have entered a semantic black hole in which the English language failed to produce a term for the outgoing decade in the same way it has failed to find a catchy moniker for your former in-laws. (Out-laws never stuck.) The language is stumped. The Zeroes? The Ohs? The Oh-Ohs? Help!"

So, since the mainstream media cannot decide on the name that we should be using, I'm officially making "the naughties" the name for the waning decade in the True Blue Liberal dot Org stylesheet. It's not up to "the English language...to produce a term for the outgoing decade." It's up to us, the speakers and writers of our language.

Now, what's the name for the next decade? Should we start calling it "the teens" before 2013?