Switzerland and the Swiss: Where does the country get its name from?

While most people will know all about what Switzerland has to offer, from trains and cheese to chocolate, efficiency and watches, many don’t know how the country got its name. Here’s how this small mountainous slice of central Europe came to be called Switzerland, and why its people are called the Swiss.

Why is the country called Switzerland?

Starting off with the basics, much like how France is the land of the French and Germany is the land of the Germans, Switzerland means the land of the Swiss. However, while the two terms are in common use today, they only started to be used officially in the 19th century.

With this in mind, here are the origins of the words Swiss and Switzerland, and what people in the region used to call themselves:

Where does the term Swiss come from?

The English, German (Schweiz, Schweizer*in), French (Suisse, Suissesse) and Italian (Svizzero, Svizzera) terms for people from Switzerland all derive from the name of one of the 26 cantons: Schwyz. The name, which was first recorded in the 10th century, is said to derive either from the old Germanic name for strength or a Celtic word for clearing.

Schwyz was one of the three founding cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy in 1291, alongside Uri and Unterwalden (now Obwalden and Nidwalden). However, at the time, you would have gotten some odd looks if you had said someone from Uri was Swiss, as people would have called themselves Urner, Unterwaldener or Schwyzer. 

Eidgenossen and Eidgenossenschaft

Between the country’s founding in the 13th century, its rapid expansion thereafter and the 15th century, people in Switzerland would never call themselves Swiss. In fact, the correct term to describe the people of the nation as a whole would be Eidgenossen, meaning either "Confederates" or “Oath-fellows.” In addition, given that the country was a loose alliance of individual regions, most would associate themselves with their home canton rather than by a national moniker.

Instead of calling itself Switzerland or the Old Swiss Confederacy as historians do today, the state’s official name was just the The Confederation or the Eidgenossenschaft.

Who first called people in Switzerland Swiss?

The first people to use the name Swiss or Schweizer were outsiders. As the country continued to expand with military victory after victory, observers, historians and politicians began to use Canton Schwyz and Schwyzer to describe all the cantons as a whole. This makes it a “pars pro toto”, where a portion of the object is used to represent its entirety.

At the same time, German writers began to switch the spelling from the Swiss German yz to the High German ei, hence Schweizer. Though it is difficult to say when the term “Swiss” caught on, the word was already being used during the Swabian wars in the 1490s and by famous political thinker Niccolò Machiavelli in the 1510s. 

Eidgenossen versus Schweizer

From the 1500s to the 1840s, Schweizer and Schweiz competed with Eidgenossen and Eidgenossenschaft as the preferred way to describe the country and its people. It was during this time that the residents started to use the terms interchangeably to describe themselves - though regional monikers like Zürcher, Berner and Genevois were more popular.

In the 16th century, the first English-speaking writers started to use the anglicisation of the Schweizer - Switzer - to describe residents of the cantons, before later switching to the anglicised French version Suisse or Swiss. This is why the country is called Switzerland in English rather than Swisserland.

The period is also when Helvetia started to be used as a personification of Switzerland. You can read more about where Confoederatio Helvetia is used and why in our guide to why Switzerland is CH in country codes.

When did the country officially become Switzerland?

Though it was in wide use among the general public, the name was only made official in the first Swiss constitution of 1848, which created Switzerland as a modern state. It was during this time that the government decided that the country should switch from “The Confederation” to being called the Swiss Confederation (Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft), with its Latin name as Confoederatio Helvetia.

Following the founding of modern Switzerland, centralisation and nationalism led to a fading of regional identities. Soon, instead of considering their cantonal neighbours as equal but unique Eidgenossen, the general public began to see everyone as equally one people: the Swiss.

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