Languages of Sweden
The Kingdom of Sweden is a nation-state for the Swedish people, and as such, their national language is held in very high regard. Of Sweden's roughly ten million people, almost all speak Swedish as at least a second language, and the majority as a first language (7,825,000, according to SIL's Ethnologue). Swedish is also an official language in Finland where it is spoken by a large number of Swedish-speaking Finns. The language is also spoken to some degree by ethnic Swedes living outside Sweden, for example, just over half a million people of Swedish descent in the United States speak the language, according to Ethnologue.
Name of Sweden
The name of Sweden was Latinized as "Suecia" adopted in various Romance and Slavic languages, including Spanish "Suecia", Catalan "Suècia", Portuguese "Suécia", Russian Швеция "Shvetsiya", and in non-European languages influenced by such languages, In these languages, there is frequent confusion between the names of Sweden and of Switzerland (Spanish "Suiza", Catalan "Suïssa", Portuguese "Suíça", Russian Швейцария "Shveytsariya"). There is a historical tradition going back to at least the 15th century to the effect that Schwyz (the settlement which gave its name to Switzerland) was indeed named after the Swedes.
Ericus Olai in his "Chronica regni Gothorum " (c. 1470) notes the similarity in toponymy, "Swycia, quasi Suecia". This tradition was taken seriously in 19th-century scholarly reception of the Swiss Swedish origin legend, especially in Swedish romantic nationalism (e.g. Erik Gustaf Geijer's 1836 "History of the Swedes"), but is not now considered likely.