the.com/hamlet

means A small village or cluster of houses, usually too small to have its own church.

from From Old French 'hamelet,' a diminutive of 'hamel,' itself a diminutive of 'ham' — an Old English/Germanic word for a home or small settlement (the same root survives in English place names like Nottingham or Birmingham). So 'hamlet' literally means a tiny little home-place — stacking diminutive suffixes on top of each other until you get the smallest possible village. The Shakespearean prince's name is an unrelated coincidence of spelling, though it's an irresistible one for dictionary jokes.