I just came across a study about the Millennials. Those are people age 21 to 29.

I hadn’t known that’s what they’re called.

There were some unexpected findings. For example, they do care about dressing well at work, but aren’t loyal employees. They change jobs every 1.6 years as opposed to people my age, who change every 4.1. I apparently missed the memo on that, having last switched when Gerald Ford was president.

Most Millennials are not “boomerang kids,” who live with parents after college. Only 15 percent do that. Predictably, they did outscore older respondents in liking to break for fun at work. Almost 40 percent said that’s important, twice as many as the “50-Plus Group.” I guess that explains why Google headquarters has game rooms with pool and ping-pong.

I didn’t like the way the survey kept comparing Millennials to the “50-plus Group.” That would include me.

Partly, it’s that we 50-plussers didn’t come off well. Millennials are far better at work-life balance than us. But mostly, I was upset to find my generation no longer has a name. What’s with this “50-Plus Group” tag?

Early on, we were called the Pepsi Generation. That was based on TV commercials in the 1970s showing tightly edited cuts of people my age having more fun than anyone else, then enjoying Pepsi to the jingle, “Come alive.”

But the Millennial study, done by the J. Walter Thompson ad agency, has determined we are now lumps who wouldn’t play ping-pong at work if our company had a game room.

Many of us 50-Plussers still expect to see ourselves in another “Come Alive” commercial. Instead, they’re pitching us products for overactive bladders. I liked the Pepsi ads better.

Coming across the “Millennials” label got me thinking how much our culture likes to find just the right name for each generation.

My own has been through many.

Originally, we were the counterculture. I think they quickly renamed us the Pepsi Generation so we would stop protesting and start playing beach volleyball instead.

When author Tom Wolfe saw we had moved on from changing the world to obsessive self-absorption, he relabeled us the “Me Generation,” and it stuck for a while. Then we became Yuppies, and finally, Baby Boomers, which isn’t my favorite, but generational labels are assigned rather than requested.

Which is why J. Walter Thompson is now calling us the 50-Plus Group.

Those coming after us, born between 1964 and 1974 or so, were called the Baby Bust generation for a while, because the birthrate was about half what it was after World War II. Then they got stuck with Generation-X, in part because they were hard to define. Unlike Baby Boomers who grew up in the Leave-It-To-Beaver 1950s, Gen-Xers had a more anxious childhood, which, as Time magazine once pointed out, was unsettled by divorce, AIDS, homelessness, drugs and Federal deficits. I think they rebelled by getting into “grunge,” though I now forget what grunge was.

Whoever was in charge of labels got fatigued around this point and named the next wave, Generation Y. More recently, when they got into their 20s, they were apparently renamed the Millennials.

If we Baby Boomers were the first to have television as a universal technology, the Millennials were the first with computers. I think they’ve done better with theirs than we did with ours, at least judging by all the twenty-somethings who started companies like MySpace and became billionaires. Most of those at Google with fat stock options are half my age.

Actually, I think stock options are out of fashion, but my point is that except for Steve Jobs and maybe Bill Gates, I don’t remember many stories about 24-year-old corporate tycoons in 1980. Today, among Millennials, those stories are common.

And now I’m trying to think what to call the newest generation, which would include my own teenagers.

I like “Facebook Generation,” but really, the Millennials have rights to that as their backup name, since they created it. They’re the Starbucks Generation, too. Also, the Blue-Tooth Generation – that’s the cell-phone earpiece on folks seemingly talking to thin-air. I was amused to see a recent article framing different groups around the computer age. Today’s elderly, for example, are “Digital Aliens.” Fifty-plussers are “Digital Immigrants.” Gen-X folks are “Digital Adaptives,” and Millinnials are “Digital Residents.”

Where does that leave those the age of my teenagers?

The best I can come up with for fifteen-somethings is what I’m struck with every time I open the phone bill.

I’d propose the “Texting Generation.” Lord knows they do enough of it.

I’ll be interested to see what they’ll be called when they come into their own in 10 years.

Just as I wonder what they’ll name Baby Boomers next.

The knee-replacement generation does not work for me.

I say we start drinking Pepsi again.

mpatinkin@projo.com