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The kids keep being lumbered with ridiculous names

 An epidemic of ironic child-naming has broken out in the Borough of Bolton. I heard no fewer than three "Skylars" being hailed (sworn at) by their mothers this weekend.

Naturally enough, being of Dutch origin, it is a gender-neutral name, derived from the Dutch surname Schuyler, and the first irony, it means "scholar". As a current and approximate 4-year-old, yes, there will be intervening years where he or she could indeed develop at school and consequently be accused of being "scholarly".

That a mother with Beluga lips, covered in tattoos and lumps of former shipbuilding rivets welded into her face, as she wandered around with her head jammed in ThickTack as said snot-machine named Skylar was digging solo into a very large bar of chocolate, is, I'm afraid, debatable. Skylar, a name that is plainly aimed at the intelligence-neutral . . . . . . or Elon Musk when he runs out of Roman numerals for his current fleet of kids.

I know, this is abject discriminatory pigeonholing, but sadly, compared with Bolton at 96%, this ward has only 70% of people of eligible working age having any formal qualifications.

Irony number two is the complete inability of its parents, siblings and friends to actually pronounce the name "Skylar" correctly, the main derivative being "Skyluhh".

Poor little sod/sodess.

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