Hamlet (place)

The word and concept of a hamlet can be traced back to Norman England, where the Old French hamelet came to apply to small human settlements.

The qala is the smallest type of settlement in Afghan society, outsized by the village (Dari/Pashto: ده), which is larger and includes a commercial area.

[15] An urban service area is recognized as equivalent to a city for the purposes of provincial and federal program delivery and grant eligibility.

In state of Karnataka, a hamlet is known by different names like Palya, Hadi (Haadi), Keri, and Padi (Paadi).

A gehucht or buurtschap has, compared to a dorp (village), no infrastructure (i.e. no inn, no school, no store) and contains often only one street, bearing the same name.

In Pakistan, a hamlet is called a gaaon گاؤں or mauza موضع in Urdu, giraaan گراں or pind پنڈ in Punjabi, and kalay کلې in Pashto.

The once common Russian word хутор (khutor) for the smallest type of rural settlement (arguably closest in nature to the English hamlet) is now mostly obsolete.

Even without state pressure, once one of the neighboring khutors got a permanent shop, school, community center (known in Russia as дом культуры, "house of culture"), maybe a medical post, others would naturally relocate closer, drawing together into one village.

Thus, the diminutive form деревенька (derevenka, tiny derevnia) is in widespread, albeit unofficial, use to denote such settlements, which mostly possess the amenities of a village yet the size of hamlet.

In the South of Spain, the term caserío (Spanish: [kaseˈɾi.o]) is also used for designating small groups of rural dwellings or farmhouses.

The hamlet is a common territorial organisation in the North West of Spain (Asturias, Cantabria and Galicia) dependent on a larger entity (e.g. parish or municipality).

In the four national languages, hamlets are known as Weiler (German), hameaux (French), frazioni (Italian) and fracziun (Romansh).

In Turkey, a hamlet is known as a mezra and denotes a small satellite settlement usually consisting of a few houses in the rural outskirts of a village.

In England, the word hamlet (having the French origin given at the top of this article) means (in current usage) simply a small settlement, maybe of a few houses or farms, smaller than a village.

However, traditionally and legally, it means a village or a town without a church,[27] although hamlets are recognised as part of land use planning policies and administration.

Hamlets may have been formed around a single source of economic activity such as a farm, mill, mine or harbour that employed its working population.

[28] Also found in Scotland more generally is ferm toun, used in the specific case of a farm settlement, including outbuildings and agricultural workers' homes.

In Mississippi, a 2009 state law (§ 17-27-5) set aside the term "municipal historical hamlet" to designate any former city, town, or village with a current population of less than 600 inhabitants that lost its charter before 1945.

The area of a hamlet may not be exactly defined; it may be designated by the Census Bureau, or it may rely on some other form of border (such as a ZIP Code, school district or fire district for more urbanized areas; rural hamlets are typically only demarcated by speed zones on the roads serving them).

Some hamlets proximate to urban areas are sometimes continuous with their cities and appear to be neighborhoods, but they still are under the jurisdiction of the town.

Hamlets do not provide services, such as utilities or fire protection, and do not have the authority to levy taxes or fees.