Switzerland is justly famous for the varied beauty of the countryside, its undulating landscape with the odd farm and sleepy village, its woods and meadows, its lakes and the majestic mountains.

The names of countless Swiss towns and villages hint at the nature of the country. Place names that contain the syllable -berg indicate a mountain, those in - bühl, - egg, -halden or -rain point to a hill. A name containing -moos indicates a swamp, while -ried was a reed bed. Fields also occur frequently, as in -acher, -feld, -matt or -wang. Ticino has many place names containing words such as Campo, Prato, Piano or Monte. The names in French-speaking Switzerland are harder to recognise, since the words have developed in different ways. But praz/pré indicate a meadow, chaux is a rocky field, sax/sex/scex are from a word for rock.

While names ending in -wil or -weil derive from farmsteads, many others contain hidden reminders of how hard the early inhabitants had to work to clear the land in the first place. Rüt(l)i, Schwand(en), Brand, and Stock all relate to ways of clearing the ground. In Ticino names like Ronco and Arzo also refer to ways of clearing the land, by digging up the wild vegetation or burning the trees. The French equivalents include variations on Essert, Cierne, Breuleux, or Ars.