I've never noticed this before. Sometimes, you notice something in the Bible, it's then so obvious that you wonder why you didn't see it there before. That's a good sign that it's on the right track - it's noticing what's there, rather than reading in things that are not there. It also means it's highly likely that lots of other people have seen it before, and that I'm just playing catch-up - so there are no claims to originality here.
The opening of the book of Samuel anchors the book firmly in its context, as a book following on from Judges.
Here's the first sentence of 1 Samuel: "There was a certain man of Remathaim-zophim of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Elkanah." Or, if you prefer:
If you've got to Samuel having just read Judges, does that remind you of anything? How about the opening of Judges chapter 17: "There was a certain man of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah." Or, if you prefer:
It's not just that it happens to sound a bit similar if you use the right English translation. Apart from a little more detail about Elkanah's exact town, and the author of Judges' apparent fondness for Maqqef, they're identical.
Judges chapters 17-21 is a unit that closes the book of Judges. Having heard the stories of the "Judges" in the book, we then get two cameos of life in Israel during the period. They are some of the blackest accounts in the Bible, and 4 times we are told that the problem was that Israel had no king; everyone did was right in his own eyes. That unit opens with the story of Micah, from the hill-country of Ephraim.
After the book of Ruth (who, by the way, was from Bethlehem - chase that back into Judges if you wish), we get the books of 1 and 2 Samuel. The narrator opens by saying, effectively: "Let's try that again shall we. I'm going to tell you the story of a certain man from the hill-country of Ephraim. Only this one was called Elkanah, and the story is going to run very differently."
The author then goes on to tell us how God gave the people a king, such that God did what was right in his eyes (compare 1 Samuel 3:18).
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