Hampton County is a rural county located in the U.S. state of South Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population was 18,561. Its county seat is Hampton. It was named for Confederate Civil War general Wade Hampton, who in the late 1870s, with the ending of Reconstruction, was elected as governor of South Carolina.

Wade Hampton III was an American military officer who joined the Confederate States of America in rebellion against the United States of America during the American Civil War. He later had a career as a South Carolina politician. Hampton came from a wealthy planter family. Shortly before the war, he was both one of the largest enslavers in the Southeastern United States and a state legislator. During the American Civil War, he joined the Confederate cavalry, where he was a lieutenant general.