Skylar Is Not in the Bible — and It Does Not Mean “Sky”

Skylar is not in the Bible, and it has nothing to do with the sky.

The second half of that surprises a good many of us, because the name looks as though it ought to mean heaven, or open air, and plenty of pages will tell us that it does. In fact Skylar is a spelling of Skyler, which comes from the Dutch surname Schuyler, and Schuyler means scholar. So the name means a learner, and a learner is what our Lord asked us to be.

What does the name Skylar mean?

Skylar means scholar. The Dutch surname Schuyler came to America with Dutch settlers, and it was taken up as a given name in honour of Philip Schuyler, the general and senator. Skyler and Skylar followed, and for a time in the 1980s the name was given mostly to boys, before it turned.

It looks like “sky” only by an accident of English spelling. That is a happy accident, and we need not be sorry about it, but the true meaning is the better one.

Is Skylar in the Bible?

It is not there in Hebrew, Greek or Latin, nor under any older form. Dutch surnames are some fifteen centuries younger than the New Testament, so there is no Hebrew root here to be found, and any page offering one has made it up.

What Scripture does give us is a picture of what a scholar really is, and it looks rather different from the one most of us carry in our heads.

The scholar who sat on the floor

In Luke’s Gospel two sisters receive Jesus into their house, and while one of them works, the other, we are told simply, sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.

To sit at a teacher’s feet was the posture of a student, the formal position of a disciple receiving instruction, and it was a place that women of that time and place were not generally offered. Mary takes it all the same, and when her sister complains, our Lord does not apologise for her. He says she has chosen the better thing, and it will not be taken from her.

So in Scripture a scholar is someone who has sat down to listen, not someone who has finished learning.

Learn from me

When he invites us to learn, what he offers to teach is not, at first, a subject:

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

He says learn from me, not learn about me, or learn the material. What he teaches is a character: gentleness and humility of heart. And the result he promises is rest, which is a strange grade to receive at the end of any course of study.

Most of us know what the other kind of learning does to us: we pile up what we know, we measure ourselves against others, and we grow tired. This teacher offers us the opposite, a yoke that fits, carried alongside someone who has borne it longer.

A word for the years of not knowing

If you carry this name through a hard season, it may help to remember that a scholar spends most of the time not yet understanding. That is part of being a learner, not a failure at it. The disciples misunderstood almost everything until after the resurrection, and they are the ones he chose. Long stretches of confusion are normal in a life of faith, and they are no sign that we have been left behind.

Nobody asks us to arrive; we are asked only to keep sitting down at his feet.

For everyone who carries the name

Since Skylar means a scholar, may we be learners for the whole of our lives, and gentle ones, because the first thing we are asked to study is gentleness itself.

And when the sky comes to mind anyway, because the name sounds as if it should, we can take that as a gift rather than an etymology. The heavens declare the glory of God, even though they do not spell our name.

Related reading

• Mackenzie Is Not in the Bible: A Highland Name Meaning “Child of the Fair One”
• Daisy Is Not in the Bible: The “Day’s Eye” and Morning in Scripture
• Logan Is Not in the Bible: A Scottish Name Meaning “Little Hollow”
• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names