“alaya” (As in Himalaya) in Sanskrit means “house” Bangla is also known as Vanga. The movement against break up of Bagladesh by British was famously known as “Vang Bhang” movement. Bhang in Hindi means -to break. You are right about “aal” as home. Actually, “aalay” means home itself. “Devalay” home of Gods, that is Temple, Mrigalay is home of animals (mrig), that is Zoe. Vanga has thus been a distinct geographical identity and the restoration of the old name can be one option. And Bengal is nothing but the Vanga, and the easiest way to maintain the legacy is to drop the 'West' from West Bengal. Vanga is synonymous with Banga because the alphabets V and B are interchangeable in Sanskrit. Banga in its etymological sense means Vanga or Vanka — marshy land. It denotes the entire stretch of lower Bengal when the sea receded and the landmass became fit for human habitation. One more thought BANGA – BA stands for river Brahmaputra and NGA for Ganga, as both the river meets here.
Nepal: Naya-pal Kingdom of Naya - Bengal: Vaang desh
The delta and surrounding hills has been inhabited for hundreds of generations (thousands of years). The area supported agriculture very early on. About 500 BC there was a shift to growing rice. This led to the development of urban areas. Because there were no stone quarries in the area houses were built of wood and mud (including adobe). Because of the monsoon climate very little evidence of the earliest inhabitants remains. From about 300 BC to the 1700s AD the Bengal delta saw the development of writing, the Bengali language, religions and the rise and fall of states. By the 1500s, the area was prosperous and even peasants had plenty to eat.
The Islamic faith took in shape foothold in the 13th century when it fell to Turkish armies. The last major Hindu Sena ruler was expelled from his capital at Nadia in Western Bengal in 1202, although lesser Sena rulers held sway for a short while after in Eastern Bengal.
Bengal was loosely associated with the Delhi Sultanate, established in 1206, and paid a tribute in War elephants in order to maintain autonomy. In 1341 Bengal became independent from Delhi, and Dhaka was established as the seat of the governors of independent Bengal. Turks ruled Bengal for several decades before the conquest of Dacca by forces of the Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great (1556-1605) in 1576. Bengal remained a Mughal Province until the beginning of the decline of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century.
Under the Mughals, the political integration of Bengal with the rest of the subcontinent began, but Bengal was never truly subjugated. It was always too remote from the centre of government in Delhi. Because lines of communications were poor, local governors found it easy to ignore imperial directives and maintain their independence. Although Bengal remained provincial, it was not isolated intellectually, and Bengali religious leaders from the fifteenth century onwards have been influential throughout the subcontinent.
The Mughals in their heyday had a profound and lasting effect on Bengal. When Akbar ascended the throne at Delhi, a road connecting Bengal with Delhi was under construction and a postal service was being planned as a step toward drawing Bengal into the operations of the empire. Akbar implemented the present-day Bengali calendar, and his son, Jahangir (1605-27), introduced civil and military officials from outside Bengal who received rights to collect taxes on land.
The development of the zamindari (tax collector and later landlord) class and its later interaction with the British would have immense economic and social implications for twentieth-century Bengal. Bengal was treated as the "Breadbasket of India" and, as the richest province in the empire, was drained of its resources to maintain the Mughal Army. The Mughals, however, did not expend much energy protecting the countryside or the capital from Arakanese or Portuguese pirates; in one year as many as 40,000 Bengalis were seized by pirates to be sold as slaves, and still the central government did not intervene. Local resistance to imperial control forced the emperor to appoint powerful generals as provincial governors. Yet, despite the insecurity of the Mughal regime, Bengal prospered. Agriculture expanded, trade was encouraged, and Dhaka became one of the centres of the textile trade in South Asia.
In 1704 the provincial capital of Bengal was moved from Dhaka to Murshidabad. Although they continued to pay tribute to the Mughal court, the governors became practically independent rulers after the death in 1707 of Aurangzeb, the last great Mughal emperor. The governors were strong enough to fend off marauding Hindu Marathas from the Bombay area during the eighteenth century. When the Mughal governor Alivardi died in 1756, he left the rule of Bengal to his grandson Siraj ud Daulah, who would lose Bengal to the British the following year. For the last half a century Bangladesh used to be called East Bengal, after they had fought hard for a united Muslim Indian homeland in 1947 and was made politically a part of the United Pakistan, However, by 1955 its citizens were commonly referred to as East Pakistanis. Dacca was then the legislative capital of Pakistani Bengal provincial region. The peoples of East Pakistan were mostly ethnic Bengalis who had a different language and culture to the people of western Pakistani. These differences eventually led to the so-called Bangladesh Liberation War. On 16 December 1971, Bangladesh gained independence, with the help of allied forces against West Pakistani forces. Nonetheless, the very existence of a Bangladesh state is a blow to the rhetoric of Islamic Unity that most Pakistanis and Muslims in general like to crow about. The present-day Muslims of Bangladesh live in greater harmony with its 14% Hindu minority counterpart than they did with Muslims of non-Bengali origins. Bangladesh is not the only case where interests other than Islamic Unity have proven more powerful. The quick disintegration of the United Arab Republic, a union of Syria and Egypt that combined Islam, Asabiyyah (Arab nationalism) and external threat (from Israel), is another case of Islamic entities splitting for interests other than Islam, other examples of co-existing Islamic countries cohabiting side by side with each other are the entities of Kuwait and Iraq, Brunei and Malaysia as neighborly and have brotherly diplomatic relations on a mission level.
After the birth of Bangladesh, Bangla replaced Urdu and English as the sole national and official language, and was the language taught in schools and used in business and government. The Bangla Academy was important in this change. In the 1980s, British-style education was maintained through private English-language institutions attended by upper class children. English continued to be taught in higher education and was offered as a subject for university degrees.
At first, Arabic also lost ground in independent Bangladesh. This trend ended in the late 1970s, however, after Bangladesh strengthened its ties with Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich, Arabic-speaking countries. An unsuccessful attempt was made in 1983 to introduce Arabic as a required language in primary and secondary levels. Arabic is widely studied in Madrassas and Islamic institutions around the country for better understanding of the Qurān, Hadith and any other Islamic texts.