ENGLAND has many musical- sounding village names.

Think of Yorkshire’s Giggleswick, Lickey End in the Midlands or Devon’s Broadwoodwidger.

However, do any of these names comes even close to Ugglebarnby, near Scarborough, a name that sounds as if it should belong to one of Tolkien’s dwarfs?

True, usually names like this disappoint. Their sound may be musical but their meaning is not. So the wonderfulsounding Giggleswick was originally Gick’s Farm, while Broadwoodwinger was, you’ve guessed it, a Broad Wood held by the Winger family.

But Ugglebarnby or Uglubarthr’s Bi, as it was originally known, has a meaning that is, if anything, more enticing than the music of the word. Yes, admittedly, ‘bi’ was simply a Viking word for a farm and Uglubarthr was the Viking owner of this farm – nothing very exciting about that, you might think.

But it is the hidden sense of Uglubarthr that should open some eyes. For this Uglubarthr means literally ‘Owl Beard’ giving us Owl Beard’s Farm. Now with a name like this, Owl Beard really could be a dwarf from Tolkien and we only have one question: What does an owlbeard actually look like?

Well, most owls have a simple oval face – think, for example, of the barn owl – with no space for facial hair, feathery or otherwise. However, the Eagle Owl, well-known in Scandinavia, the Vikings’ homeland, sometimes has a discolouration of tufted feathers at the chin.

If this is the origin of the name, then we might guess that Uglubarthr had a Dark Age goatee or chin curtain across his angry Norse face.