You say a soft keyword isn't an option and I understand why, but what about one that is incredibly unlikely to have been used very often? I'm thinking of just a simple double underscore:

>>> a = __

>>> a

'a'

This would be a breaking change, but surely __ is not in widespread use...? And I think it looks a bit of alright.

>>> Point = NamedTuple(__, "x y")

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Ricky.

"I've never met a Kentucky man who wasn't either thinking about going home or actually going home." - Happy Chandler