Belfaux (; , locally ) is a municipality in the district of Sarine in the canton of Fribourg in Switzerland. Its former German name was Gumschen, but this is no longer in use. History Belfaux is first mentioned in 12th century as Bellofago. In 1229 it was mentioned as Bellfozen. The municipality was formerly known by its German name Gumschen, however, that name is no longer used. On 1 January 2016, Belfaux annexed the neighboring municipality of Autafond. Geography Belfaux has an area, , of . Of this area, or 53.4% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 31.0% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 14.6% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.5% is either rivers or lakes and or 0.2% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 9.4% and transportation infrastructure made up 3.6%. Out of the forested land, 28.9% of the total land area is heavily forested and 2.0% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 35.6% is used for growing crops and 16.6% is pastures, while 1.2% is used for orchards or vine crops. Of the water in the municipality, 0.2% is in lakes and 0.3% is in rivers and streams. The municipality is located in the Sarine district. It consists of the villages of Belfaux, Cutterwil and Autafond. Coat of arms The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Or a Beech Tree Vert Trunked and branched Maroon issuant from a Mount of 3 Coupeaux of the second. Demographics Belfaux has a population () of . , 20.9% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (2000–2010) the population has changed at a rate of 18.1%. Migration accounted for 11.6%, while births and deaths accounted for 6.5%. Most of the population () speaks French (1,890 or 85.4%) as their first language, German is the second most common (166 or 7.5%) and Macedonian is the third (34 or 1.5%). There are 15 people who speak Italian. , the population was 50.6% male and 49.4% female. The population was made up of 1,007 Swiss men (38.9% of the population) and 304 (11.7%) non-Swiss men. There were 1,031 Swiss women (39.8%) and 248 (9.6%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality, 572 or about 25.8% were born in Belfaux and lived there in 2000. There were 909 or