motherfucking hahstables

Hello /prog/

Im trying to implement a hash-table algorithm, the problem is: i dont know shit about hash-tables.

Now i might seem noobish for asking, but can someone explain them to me, Wikipedia didnt help a dick.
All i could find out was that the key has to be encoded in some way.

On a side note, why the fuck is it called a linked list? Isnt it obvious that it is linked, else it wouldnt be a list would it.

Ok, so i read about this whole thing and found out that its somewhat a thing of luck to find a good method. Now im still dont know much more about this.
As far as i could figure is that a hashtable in essence is a sorted linked list with hash function encoded key entries and coresponding values or two indexed arrays with keys and values assigned to each other by their index. Would that be somewhat correct?

Im sure im not the first one doing this here, so i would like to know which way would be the best.

Im off sleeping, good night /prog/ i love you.