Coronials is the name popularly given to the kids being born in 2020. Some people state that this shall be the name for those being born during the COVID-19 pandemic (the babies born in the whole year 2020), the kids that will know the post-Corona world and not any other.
Some other vocabulary users prefer to name this way to the babies conceived during the pandemic (the babies that will be born by the end of 2020 and 2021.
Is this neologism going to stay or was it just a fun hype during the pandemic? Only time will tell.
With worldwide regulations and recommendations to stay home (with most countries in lockdown and some others warning about being outside the house and with other people), with spread recommendations or strict obligation to #stayathome, there were enough couples locked at their houses.
Those who didn’t have kids had the best opportunity to enjoy the relationship and time enough for romance. It’s easy to fantasize about a lot of sex behind the walls and that lots of babies will be conceived during the quarantine. At least this is an easy joke, right? This half naughty half cute idea spread throughout the internet and there were theories stating that there would be a baby boom taking place by the end of 2020 and 2021.
This shall be more a fantasy than a reality.
In 2020, the world faced an unknown scary situation and an out-of-scale economical crisis. Historically, during controversial periods or with economical retraction people tend not to have kids (as happened during the big recession in the 1930s).
Too few or too many babies born in 2020: so far “coronials” is an accepted name for the 2020 cohort, if not for a generation or microgeneration.
They will probably be nested under Generation Alpha. This is the name given to the offspring of the millennials, the generation after Gen Z.
There is another certainty: the babies born in 2020/2021 are born in a very different world than those born ever before. The world is rapidly changing and some differences are here to stay.
Some authors imagine a beautiful new generation of resilient adults to come, others have more fearful thoughts and describe the people of the future as hygiene freaks that are scared of classmates, relatives and neighbors because they see them as vectors of contagion.
The Urban Dictionary, a website that collects the slang going around the internet suggests a funny example, including in the Coronial phrase use example that they won’t “…comprehend how pre-coronials coped with relentless inflation”.
With a big amount of neologisms that emerged out of the lockdown and spread with the speed of light through social media, the common uses during the quarantine fermented a worldwide language to name our feelings (and laugh about our behavior and about the disgrace too).
Coronials (also called Covidials) shall be in 2033/2034 quaranteens, their parents will get covidivorces and they are part of the neologisms that spread as fast as the virus. 2020 saw the rising of a hilarious glossary which includes words such as quarantini (although going into alcohol was not recommended by the WHO), maskie (a selfie with your mask on), covidiot (those who break the isolation and social distance rules and do not follow the protocols), among many others.