How Did The World Wars Get Their Names?

And why are they so generic?

(Public domain)

If you read a science fiction novel that included names of conflicts like Global Conflict I and Worldwide Fight III, you would think that the book took place in some dystopian future or that the author was lazy. The name Global Conflict One evokes no emotion. It feels sterile and uncanny. Yet, humanity's largest and bloodiest conflicts have names that follow the same convention. People have talked about World War I and World War II ad nauseam, so much so that we have become numb to the sheer banality of the name. (At least the Russians call World War II The Great Patriotic War, which, honestly, is a much better name.)

This raises the obvious question: how did the World Wars get their names? Why are they so generic? Are we doomed to follow this boring naming convention for the rest of history? (World War III, World War IV, etc.)

Fans of Franklin D. Roosevelt will be happy to learn that FDR also thought the name was silly, and he attempted to change it (after accidentally giving it its current form.) Here is how we ended up with World War I and World War II as the names for history’s two deadliest wars.

World War I

Unsurprisingly, World War I did not get its name until there was a World War II. Before World War II, World…