Labelling the generations was a tool for marketers primarily. They were using ‘Silent Generation’ or something like it long before it filtered out to the public, to identify the cohort between Baby Boomers and our WWII generation parents.
IIRC “the Greatest Generation” was invented by Tom Brokaw to celebrate our aging and dying WWII parents. No one had called them that before.
‘Baby boom’ and ‘Boomers became well known because writers were always using it to describe how our population bulge was affecting schools, housing, medicine, clothing, entertainment, you name it.
It was actually during the "BABY BOOM" that the term WAR BABIES was coined. It wasn't about marketing nor selling to that cohort...it was coined whilst talking/writing about what the HUGE Baby Boom was doing to the population in general, vis-a-vis schools going on 1/2 day sessions, being overcrowded,new parenting verses how they had been raising kids before, etc.!
Yes, it was a book by Tom Brokaw...the title of which is THE GREATEST GENERATION.
The compartmentalizing of generation really began in the early '50s with calling it THE BABY BOOM, which led to others denouncing the adults THE GRAY FLANNEL SUITERS ( from the book and then the movie of the same name ), meaning "conformity".
The thing is...there really wasn't all THAT much "conformity" back then. People bought,watched, listened to what was available, but that didn't mean that they all thought or acted alike.
I’m what is as known as an “Xennial”