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Swiss people

The Swiss people (German: die Schweizer, French: les Suisses, Italian: gli Svizzeri, Romansh: ils Svizzers) are the citizens of the multi-ethnic Swiss Confederation (Switzerland) regardless of ethno-cultural background[b] or people of self-identified Swiss ancestry.

Total population

0.8 million (2016)[2]

c. 1.5 million[3]

209,287

99,582

83,667

51,964

41,463

40,183

26,499

26,374

23,670

18,350

15,120

13,611

10,414

10,195

8,651

7,743

7,345

6,916

6,601

5,730

5,405

5,289

4,878

3,720

3,615

3,446

3,048

2,956

2,884

2,564

2,348

2,229

The number of Swiss nationals has grown from 1.7 million in 1815 to 8.7 million in 2020. More than 1.5 million Swiss citizens hold multiple citizenship.[5] About 11% of citizens live abroad (0.8 million, of whom 0.6 million hold multiple citizenship). About 60% of those living abroad reside in the European Union (0.46 million). The largest groups of Swiss descendants and nationals outside Europe are found in the United States, Brazil and Canada.


Although the modern state of Switzerland originated in 1848, the period of romantic nationalism, it is not a nation-state, and the Swiss are not a single ethnic group, but rather are a confederacy (Eidgenossenschaft) or Willensnation ("nation of will", "nation by choice", that is, a consociational state), a term coined in conscious contrast to "nation" in the conventionally linguistic or ethnic sense of the term.


The demonym Swiss (formerly in English also called Switzer) and the name of Switzerland, ultimately derive from the toponym Schwyz, have been in widespread use to refer to the Old Swiss Confederacy since the 16th century.[6]

High Alemannic

The French-speaking Swiss (), traditionally speaking Franco-Provençal dialects (as well as the Franc-Comtois dialect of the Oïl languages in parts of Jura), today largely assimilated to the standard French language (Swiss French), amalgamated from the Gallo-Roman population and Burgundians (the historical Upper Burgundy). Romands are considered a distinct Romance people.[7] They are closely related to the French populations of Franche-Comté and Rhône-Alpes. They are referred to as Welsche (singular Welsche f./Welscher m.) in Swiss German. French speakers (including French immigrants) accounted for 22.8% of population as of 2020.

Romands

The Italian-speaking Swiss (Svizzeri italiani, see also ), traditionally speakers of Lombard language (Ticinese varieties, as well as the dialects of the Bregaglia, Poschiavo and Mesolcina valleys in Grisons) today partly assimilated to the standard Italian language, amalgamated from Raetians and Lombards. They are closely related to the population of Northern Italy, especially Lombards. Italian speakers (including Italian immigrants) accounted for 8% of population as of 2020.

Swiss Italian

The , speakers of the Romansh language, settling in parts of the Grisons, historically of Raetic stock. Romansh speakers accounted for about 0.5% of population as of 2020.[8]

Romansh

The ethno-linguistic composition of the territories of modern Switzerland includes the following components:


The core Eight Cantons of the Swiss Confederacy were entirely Alemannic-speaking, and German speakers remain the majority. However, from as early as the 15th century, parts of French-speaking Vaud and Italian-speaking Ticino were acquired as subject territories by Bern and Uri, respectively. The Swiss Romandie was formed by the accession of French-speaking Geneva and Neuchâtel and the partly francophone Valais and Bernese Jura (formerly part of the Prince-Bishopric of Basel) to the Restored Swiss Confederacy in 1815. Romansh was formerly considered a group of Italian dialects, but Switzerland declared Romansh a national language in 1938 in reaction to the fascist Italian irredentism at the time.


Switzerland experienced significant immigration from Italy in the very late 19th and early 20th century, such that in 1910 that accounted for some 10% of the Swiss population. This immigration was halted by the Great Depression and WWII. It restarted after the war ended. As elsewhere in Western Europe, immigration to Switzerland has increased dramatically since the 1960s, so that a large proportion of the resident population of Switzerland are now not descended or only partially descended from the core ethno-linguistic groups listed above. As of 2011, 37% of total resident population of Switzerland had immigrant background.[9] As of 2016, the most widely used foreign languages were English, Portuguese, Albanian, Serbo-Croatian and Spanish, all named as a "main language" by more than 2% of total population (respondents could name more than one "main language").[10]

The genetic composition of the Swiss population is similar to that of Central Europe in general. Switzerland is on one hand at the crossroads of several prehistoric migrations, while on the other hand the Alps acted as a refuge in some cases. Genetic studies found the following haplogroups to be prevalent:


Haplogroup R1b-U152 also known as R1b-S28 is the frequent haplogroup of Swiss people, followed by R1b-U106/R1b-S21.

Brünig-Napf-Reuss line

Demographics of Switzerland

List of Swiss people

Women in Switzerland

Röstigraben

Swiss migration to France

Swiss nationality law

Swiss abroad

Swiss Americans

Swiss Mexicans

Walter Sorell, The Swiss: A cultural panorama of Switzerland. Bobbs-Merrill, 1972.

Heinrich Zschokke, Des Schweizerlands Geschichten für das Schweizervolk, J. J. Mäcken, 1823. , trans. as The History of Switzerland, for the Swiss People by Francis George Shaw, 1855. Google Books

Internet Archive

Frank Webb, Switzerland of the Swiss, Scribners, 1910.

Archive.org

Paul Bilton, The Xenophobe's Guide to the Swiss, Oval Projects Ltd, 1999.

Internet Archive

Leo Schelbert, Swiss Migration to America: The Swiss Mennonites, Ayer Publishing, 1980.

John Paul Von Grueningen, The Swiss In The United States: A Compilation Prepared for the Swiss-American Historical Society as the Second Volume of Its Publications, Swiss-American Historical Society, 1940, reprinted for Clearfield Co. by Genealogical Pub. Co., 2005,  978-0-8063-5265-7.

ISBN

Henry Demarest Lloyd, John Atkinson Hobson, The Swiss democracy: The Study of a Sovereign People, T. F. Unwin, 1908.

J. Christopher Herold, The Swiss without Halos, Greenwood Press, 1979.

Julie Hartley-Moore, The Song of Gryon: Political Ritual, Local Identity, and the Consolidation of Nationalism in Multiethnic Switzerland, Journal of American Folklore 120.476 (2007) 204–229.

Arnold Henry Moore Lunn, The Swiss and their Mountains: A Study of the Influence of Mountains on Man, Rand McNally, 1963.

Hans Kohn, Nationalism and Liberty: The Swiss Example. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1956.

Marcello Sorce Keller, "Transplanting multiculturalism: Swiss musical traditions reconfigured in multicultural Victoria", in Joel Crotti and Kay Dreyfus (Guest Editors), Victorian Historical Journal, LXXVIII(2007), no. 2, pp. 187–205; later appeared in Bulletin - Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Musikethnologie und Gesellschaft für die Volksmusik in der Schweiz, October 2008, pp. 53–63.