On April 2, 2020 USA Today featured an article entitled “Will coronavirus cause a baby boom, or is that just a myth? Prepare for jokes, if not babies!” (Puente). It’s logical to expect that the more time spent together with your significant other during periods of lockdown and quarantine the greater the chances are of an unplanned pregnancy especially if the couple cannot access contraception.
Nobody could say back then how long lockdown would last or the pandemic in general but people were starting to come up with ideas as to what to name the generation born during the pandemic. After some humorous talk about baby boom jokes, the article went onto say “The interest is such that people on Twitter are suggesting new names for this supposed coronavirus cohort: Coronials. Quaranteens. Baby Zoomers.”
Merriam Webster’s Dictionary has “coronials” listed under their “Words we’re watching” section: “When a pandemic strikes, things drastically change and, in turn, new words are born to define and communicate the changes and their repercussions. In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, we published a guide to coronavirus-related words, and we are considering adding another to the list: coronial. The word was coined as a name for a person conceived or born during the pandemic.“
The Coronials will include all those born in December of 2020, and, unless the pandemic ends quickly, the early months of 2021.
— Doctor Edmund Fitzgerald, quoted in The Berkeleyside, 1 Apr. 2020Meanwhile a colleague acquaints me with reports that the generation of children conceived during the pandemic are likely to be called Coronials and then, later, the Quaranteens.
— Ian Warden, The Canberra (Australia) Times, 22 Aug. 2020
Social Media Trends as of August 31, 2022
Facebook #coronials: 2,200 people are posting about this
Instagram #coronials: 5,685 posts
TikTok #coronials: 925,900 views
Google Trends: coronials registered sometime in February 2020 before lockdown but the popularity of the term reached its peak during the week of March 15, 2020 when lockdown had just started.
Sources:
“Coronials.” Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary.com. URL: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/meaning-of-coronial-covid-kids.
Donohue, Daniel. “thinking woman.” ImgFlip.com. 2020. URL: https://imgflip.com/i/3si2ap.
KevinSmithNBA. “Are we all agreed that babies born 9 months after COVID-19 are going to be call coronials? And in 2033/2034 they’ll all become quaranteens?” Twitter. March 25, 2020. URL: https://twitter.com/KeithSmithNBA/status/1242955200102629376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1242955200102629376%7Ctwgr%5E4561efd7e35815baa82419914c9fed668df069d0%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fstory%2Flife%2Fparenting%2F2020%2F04%2F02%2Fcoronavirus-fact-check-could-covid-19-cause-baby-boom%2F5105448002%2F.
Puente, Maria. “Will coronavirus cause a baby boom, or is that just a myth? Prepare for jokes, if not babies!” USA Today. April 2, 2020. URL: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/parenting/2020/04/02/coronavirus-fact-check-could-covid-19-cause-baby-boom/5105448002/.