Hampshire is a county in the south of England, sitting on the English Channel. Southampton and Portsmouth are its big coastal cities; Winchester is the old county town. On envelopes people often write Hants, not the full name — that is the old short form, though actually it does not look like Hampshire at all. The name comes from Old English Hāmtūn, which is Southampton, plus sċīr, a shire or county: so it began as “Southampton’s shire.” A /p/ sound later grew in the middle when people said it; Thompson picked up an extra /p/ in the same way. Do not mix this up with New Hampshire, a US state named after this English county. A small community in Prince Edward Island, Canada, is also named after the English Hampshire, with Wiltshire nearby in the same naming idea.