Cottens (; , locally ) is a municipality in the district of Sarine in the canton of Fribourg in Switzerland. Its German name of Cottingen has now largely fallen out of use. History Cottens is first mentioned in 1138 as Cotens. Geography Cottens has an area, , of . Of this area, or 69.8% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 17.3% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 12.1% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.2% is either rivers or lakes and or 0.6% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 7.0% and transportation infrastructure made up 4.2%. Out of the forested land, all of the forested land area is covered with heavy forests. Of the agricultural land, 46.1% is used for growing crops and 22.5% is pastures, while 1.2% is used for orchards or vine crops. All the water in the municipality is flowing water. The municipality is located in the Sarine district, on the road and rail lines between Romont and Fribourg. Coat of arms The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Per fess Argent and sable overall a Key Or. Demographics Cottens has a population () of . , 13.0% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (2000–2010) the population has changed at a rate of 37.1%. Migration accounted for 26.9%, while births and deaths accounted for 9.5%. Most of the population () speaks French (896 or 93.0%) as their first language, German is the second most common (42 or 4.4%) and Italian is the third (7 or 0.7%). , the population was 49.6% male and 50.4% female. The population was made up of 548 Swiss men (42.9% of the population) and 86 (6.7%) non-Swiss men. There were 560 Swiss women (43.9%) and 83 (6.5%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality, 341 or about 35.4% were born in Cottens and lived there in 2000. There were 420 or 43.6% who were born in the same canton, while 100 or 10.4% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 79 or 8.2% were born outside of Switzerland. , children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 24.2% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) make up 59.6% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 16.2%. , there were 373 people who were single and never married in the municipality.