Switzerland

On August 1, 1291, three forest communities along Lake Lucerne signed a charter of mutual defense. Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden called themselves the Everlasting League. Within a century, the name of one of them, Schwyz, had spread to cover all of them.

The canton name Schwyz appears in a Latin document as Suuites around 972 AD. The word probably traces to Old High German suedan, meaning to clear land by burning. Farming families in alpine valleys burned forest edges to make meadows, and the place became the people. The Swiss are, in one reading of the word, the people of the burning.

By the 15th century, Swiss mercenaries were the most feared infantry in Europe. Their reputation after victories at Morgarten in 1315 and Sempach in 1386 carried the name Schweizer far beyond the Alps. German-speaking neighbors used Schweiz for the whole confederation. The Latin Helvetia, from the ancient Helvetii tribe, ran alongside it in official documents.

English borrowed Switzerland from German Schweizerlandt around the 1560s, when Protestant reformers like Heinrich Bullinger in Zurich corresponded with English clergy. The land needed a name English speakers could pronounce, and Switzerland settled into use. The canton of Schwyz, population a few thousand in 1291, had given its name to a country. A clearing in the forest became a word the whole world knows.