Swiss Last Names

How this list was compiled: Built on 2 October 2026 from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office's open data file 'Last names of the permanent resident population by language region', year 2025 (https://www.bfs.admin.ch/asset/en/ts-x-01.04.00.16, found through opendata.swiss; open use, the source must be named). The file ranks every last name inside each of the four language regions. Listed here: the 120 commonest names of the German-speaking, the French-speaking and the Italian-speaking region and the 40 commonest of the Romansh-speaking region, all of them, in the file's spelling; then, further down each region's ranking, the next names that no other list of this site holds (39, 54, 15 and 15 names), so that the page stays mostly its own. A card gives the name's place in its region; no head count is printed. A name that stands among those listed in more than one region (34 names) is one card: it is filed under the region where its place is highest, the card gives its place in each of them, and the Place row goes by that highest place. So 151 names are filed under the German-speaking region, 152 under the French-speaking, 120 under the Italian-speaking and 52 under the Romansh-speaking one. The count is of residents, whatever their citizenship. Meanings come from English Wiktionary's surname entries (https://en.wiktionary.org, CC BY-SA 4.0, read the same day): 55 cards quote the first clause of an etymology that gives the word behind the name; the other cards have no such entry and say nothing. An origin is what a dictionary records for the surname in general, not for any one family. That Müller, Meier and Schmid are the commonest last names of the whole country is the office's own statement on its page 'First and last names in Switzerland' (https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/population/births-deaths/names-switzerland.html, read the same day). Checked again on 3 October 2026: every place on every card was compared with the office's file, and Osmani and Kastrati came off because the Albanian list of this site now holds them. Counted that day, with accents ignored: no single other list of this site holds more than 67 of the 475 names (14.1 in 100). Every card that states a meaning keeps the address of the page it was read on. Licence: Federal Statistical Office (FSO), Switzerland, open government data: free use with the source named (opendata.swiss terms of use, 'BY'). Meanings draw on English Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). The wording of the cards is our own work.