Oekingen

Oekingen is a municipality in the district of Wasseramt in the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland. Oekingen is first mentioned in 1263 as Otechingen. Oekingen has an area, , of . Of this area, or 63.8% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 25.0% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 13.3% is settled (buildings or roads). Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 7.5% and transportation infrastructure made up 5.4%. Out of the forested land, 23.8% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.3% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 48.3% is used for growing crops and 14.2% is pastures, while 1.3% is used for orchards or vine crops. The municipality is located in the Wasseramt district, along the Oesch river. It consists of the linear village of Oekingen. The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Gules a Horse Argent running above a Base Vert. Oekingen has a population () of . , 4.1% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1999–2009 ) the population has changed at a rate of 5.7%. It has changed at a rate of 2.5% due to migration and at a rate of 3.6% due to births and deaths. Most of the population () speaks German (641 or 97.4%), with Portuguese being second most common (8 or 1.2%) and French being third (4 or 0.6%). the gender distribution of the population was 49.6% male and 50.4% female. The population was made up of 332 Swiss men (45.9% of the population) and 27 (3.7%) non-Swiss men. There were 342 Swiss women (47.2%) and 23 (3.2%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality 246 or about 37.4% were born in Oekingen and lived there in 2000. There were 231 or 35.1% who were born in the same canton, while 133 or 20.2% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 31 or 4.7% were born outside of Switzerland. In there were 7 live births to Swiss citizens and were 5 deaths of Swiss citizens. Ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss citizens increased by 2 while the foreign population remained the same.