๐ How Rare Are You in Switzerland?
๐จ๐ญ Genetic Landscape of Switzerland
Switzerland's four linguistic regions (German, French, Italian, Romansh) reflect genuine genetic substructure. Swiss Germans, Swiss French, and Swiss Italians show measurable genetic differences matching their respective neighboring countries. The Alpine valleys created genetic micro-isolation for centuries, preserving distinct local profiles. The Romansh-speaking Graubรผnden canton shows some of the most genetically distinct populations in Western Europe.
Ancestry is unusually easy to trace here, because the state keeps track of it. Every citizen has a Heimatort, a place of origin inherited down the family line rather than a birthplace, and it appears on identity documents โ so a Swiss passport can point to a village the family left generations ago. Surnames follow the same logic and cluster tightly by commune, which is why a name can be ordinary in one valley and unheard of in the next one over. Part of that pattern is medieval: the Walser, German-speaking settlers who crossed the high passes out of the Valais, founded communities as far off as Graubรผnden and northern Italy, carrying dialects that still sound markedly different from lowland German.
๐ The surname that hands down a citizenship
Swiss citizenship is assembled from the bottom up. Article 37 of the Federal Constitution says that any person who is a citizen of a commune, and of the canton that commune belongs to, is a Swiss citizen. The Civil Code then pins that commune to a name. Article 160 leaves each spouse their own surname, and parents who keep separate names decide which of the two their children will bear. Article 271 closes the chain: the child acquires the cantonal and communal citizenship of the parent whose surname the child bears.
So a decision at a registry desk about which surname a child takes also settles which commune of origin that child inherits. Those articles were rewritten together by the Federal Act of 30 September 2011 on Name and Citizenship, in force since 1 January 2013, and the two paragraphs of Article 160 about choosing a family surname were amended again by the Marriage for All Act, in force since 1 July 2022. Changing a name later is cantonal business: Article 30 lets the government of the canton of residence permit one for good cause.
๐๏ธ Eye Color
| Blue | 45% |
| Green | 12% |
| Gray | 8% |
| Hazel | 15% |
| Brown | 20% |
๐ Hair Color
| Brown | 30% |
| Dark Brown | 22% |
| Blonde | 20% |
| Black | 12% |
| Red | 3% |
| Gray | 13% |
๐ฉธ Blood Type
| A+ | 38% |
| O+ | 32% |
| B+ | 8% |
| AB+ | 4% |
| A- | 6% |
| O- | 7% |
| B- | 3% |
| AB- | 2% |
Trait frequencies on this page come from public and institutional datasets โ see Data Sources.
🧮 Calculate Your Rarity in Switzerland
Pick your eye colour, hair colour and blood type. The calculator uses Switzerland's own figures from the tables above, not world averages.
This is an estimate, not a measurement. It multiplies three national frequencies as if they were independent, and they are not: eye and hair colour share pigmentation genes, so a combination that tends to run together, such as blue eyes with blonde hair, is more common than the multiplication suggests, while one that rarely does, such as blue eyes with black hair, is rarer. Blood type is independent of both. The frequencies are national averages from public datasets — see Data Sources.
That number describes the body you were born with. Fraeon, our other site, does the same arithmetic for the part you chose: the films, series, games, books, anime and manga you have actually finished. Start your log →
๐ Half a million surnames, nine million people
The Federal Statistical Office counts names straight out of the population register. Its latest run covers the permanent resident population as at 31 December 2025, and it puts Mรผller first, then Meier, then Schmid. About 53,000 Mรผllers work out at 0.6% of 9.1 million residents, and the office counts over half a million distinct surnames in the country. A commonest name holding well under one percent is not the shape most people expect from a small country.
The same page says why a surname might be missing from the tables. Names occurring fewer than three times nationwide are left out for data protection, and at municipality level only surnames appearing at least eight times are counted. First names and surnames are deliberately kept unlinked, so nobody can ask the statistics how many Anna Mรผllers there are. The general version of that problem is on our name rarity page.
๐ค Strauss and Strauร are two different rows
German has a letter Swiss spelling lets you do without. The official rules of the Council for German Orthography set out in ยง25 that ร is written for a sharp s after a long vowel or diphthong โ Maร, Straรe, Strauร. Note E2 to the same paragraph adds that where ร is not available you write ss, and that in Switzerland and Liechtenstein ss may always be written: Straรe, Strasse.
That matters for counting names, because the Federal Statistical Office counts different spellings separately. Strauss and Strauร are the same name out loud, and a count that separates spellings gives them two rows. The office also, as a rule, reads a multi-word surname only as far as the first space, unless the first word is a prefix like von or de, which counts as part of the name. How rare a surname looks depends partly on how a register chose to write it.
โญ Rare Facts About Switzerland
Where the numbers on this page come from
The population figure and the surname counts are the Federal Statistical Office's, taken from STATPOP as at 31 December 2025. The legal quotations come from Fedlex, and the spelling rule from the Council for German Orthography. Blutspende SRK Schweiz publishes a national blood group distribution, and several rows in the table above do not match it. The height, eye colour and hair colour figures are estimates: we could not find a Swiss federal publication for any of them. Last checked September 2026.