Young Blonde Girl With A Fringe And Blue Eyes Posing At The Tree, In The Car And In The Bathroom

The term fringe refers to the resemblance of the short row of hair to ornamental fringe trim, such as that often found on shawls.
The term bangs originally referred to hair cut bang-off (straight across at the front), although the term is now applied to diverse forms of fringe. It is probably related to bang-tail, a term still used for the practice of cutting horses' tails straight across.
There are other terms such as patch, which connotes the coloring of overlying bangs.