X

Generation X has actually been used to refer to several generations, depending on which reference is meant:

The original Generation X was a 1965 book about post-war youth in England. The older ones (up to mid-20s, say) would have been Blitz - "born in the war," the equivalent of America's Silent generation - while the younger ones would have been Prophets, like American Boomers.

Billy Idol's first band used that book's title for its name - an appropriate one for a punk band. Mr. Idol (born 1955) is solidly in that Prophet generation - whatever the equivalent is of the Boomers in England, anyway - although too young to have really been a part of the earlier X.

Douglas Coupland used the band's name for his book, Generation X: Tales For an Accelerated Culture. (Well, really he acknowledges Billy Idol for the term, while saying it actually was based on references in a book called Class by one Paul Fussell.) Mr. Coupland (born 1961) is in fact the Nomad generation by Strauss & Howe's definition, although he has since disavowed the idea that there Generation X even exists.

Strauss & Howe did not use Generation X in their books: The post-Boomer Nomad generation was called 13th Generation in both Generations and The Fourth Turning. They use it currently on their websites, though, acknowledging that it is the dominant and preferred term.