The Etymology of Hamlet
Hamlet is a triple-stacked little — a charming layering of diminutives. The base is Frankish *haim (home, village), the same Germanic word that gives English home, German Heim, and the -ham ending in countless English place-names like Birmingham and Nottingham. Old French borrowed the Frankish ham as a small village, then added the diminutive -el to make hamel (little village), then added another diminutive -et to make hamelet (very little village). English took the whole stack around 1380. In English law, a hamlet was technically a small settlement that lacked its own parish church and depended on a nearby village for ecclesiastical services — a definition that survived into the 19th century. The Shakespearean prince Hamlet is unrelated: his name comes from a Norse personal name Amleth (Old Norse Amlóði), which Saxo Grammaticus latinised. So the play and the place-word are linguistic strangers despite their shared spelling.