The majority of New Hampshire's counties were named for prominent British or American people or geographic locations and features.

Only one county's name originates in a Native American language: Coös County, named for an Algonquian word meaning "small pines".

The counties tend to be smaller in land area towards the southern end of the state, where New Hampshire population is concentrated, and larger in land area in the less populous north.

[1][2] The FIPS county code is the five-digit Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code which uniquely identifies counties and county equivalents in the United States.

To uniquely identify Belknap County, New Hampshire, one must use the state code of 33 plus the county code of 001; therefore, the unique nationwide identifier for Belknap County, New Hampshire is 33001.