Although the name Buckinghamshire is Anglo Saxon in origin meaning The district (scire) of Bucca's home (referring to Buckingham in the north of the county) the name has only been recorded since about the 12th century. The historic county itself has been in existence since it was a subdivision of the kingdom of Wessex in the 10th century. It was formed out of about 200 communities that could between them fund a castle in Buckingham, to defend against invading Danes.
Some of the places in Buckinghamshire date back much further than the Anglo-Saxon period. Aylesbury, for example, is known from archaeological digs to date back at least as far as 1500 B.C. and the Icknield Way, which crosses the county, is pre-Roman in origin. There are a wealth of places that still have their Brythonic names (Penn, Wendover), or a compound of Brythonic and Anglo Saxon (Brill, Chetwode, Great Brickhill) and there are pre-Roman earthworks all over the county. Also, Cunobelinus, King of the Catuvellauni (and one of the legendary kings of the Britons) is said to have had a castle in the area which acted as an outpost (the earthworks of which still remain) and lent his name to the group of villages known as the Kimbles.