Arabella McIntyre-Brown's book Liverpool: The First 1000 years suggests that 'no-one knows the origin of the name Little Bongs' - I would dispute this as the book is a rather poor excuse for a local history book, it's riddled with errors and indeed on the same page says that Aigburth is the Druid name for a grove of Oak trees.*
Derek Whale also says the name is lost in the midst of time but suggests that it just means 'Little Cottages', I am inclined to agree with this.
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I've also discovered an area in Manchester which used to be called 'Caley Bangs' im thinking that 'Bangs' and 'Bongs' are cognates (words that have the same origin) but what they mean I don't know.
I've got some great minds working on this at the moment
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*Aigburth does indeed refer to Oak tress but means 'Hill of the Oak Trees' - not 'grove' and what is even worse is that there is no such thing as a 'Druid' name. The druids died out in the 2nd century AD and probably spoke Brythonic language - the name Aigburth is a hybrid of Old Norse [Aig] and Old English (Anglo Saxon) [-burgh] and is from a later period. It's quite a shoddy piece of work really.
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