The Swiss (, , , ) are citizens or natives of Switzerland. The demonym derives from the toponym of Schwyz and has been in widespread use to refer to the Old Swiss Confederacy since the 16th century. Although the Swiss Confederation, the modern state of Switzerland, originated in 1848, the period of romantic nationalism, it is not a nation-state, and the Swiss are not usually considered to form a single ethnic group, but 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 number of Swiss nationals has grown from 1.7 million in 1815 to 6.76 million in 2009, 90% of them living in Switzerland. About 60% of those living abroad reside in the European Union (423,300); the largest overseas expatriate community is in Argentina (150,000).
