USC student names the decade

Down with the naughts, the zeros and the two-thousands. University of South Carolina student Ryan Guerra has come up with the name for the decade (2000-2009), and he is campaigning to bring the name to the world.

The Unies (prononced "u-nees").

"I had been thinking about all the names that were being suggested, and I didn't think any of them captured the essence of what this decade was going to be about," said Ryan Guerra, a senior majoring in public relations at USC. "The name of the Unies is about unification and hope, all of the things we hope this decade will be.

"I thing when we name this decade it should be a name that reminds us of what a special time it was. This can be the decade of unification. The naughts and the zeros don't say that."

The naming debate of the decade is fueled by the fact that there not a word that is commonly used to describe single digit numbers. Guerra thinks Unies fits the bill nicely, and that's why he is on the campaign trail.

By pitching his idea to students and members of the community, Gerra is printing up t-shirts and bumper stickers with the new name for the decade, and is carrying his message through the local media.

"What I have been telling people is that the Unies just make sense phonetically," he said. "The Eighties, Nineties and the Unies. It will be the classic hits of the Unies." and it has other uses like the temperature will dip into the low unies.' It just the name that fits."

Guerra has gotten the support of the student government and other university leaders.