This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Köping" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Köping was aSwedish denomination for amarket town sincethe Middle Ages, derived from theOld Norse wordkaupang. The designation was officially abolished with the municipal reform of 1971, whenSweden was subdivided into theMunicipalities of Sweden (currently amounting to 290).

As present-dayFinland was once a part of Sweden, theFinnish wordkauppala has the same meaning. In modern Finnish, the wordkaupunki, borrowed from the Old Norse wordkaupang, is the main word for town and city. Swedishköping and theEnglishtoponymchipping are alsocognates as is the Norwegian wordkjøpstad and the Danish toponymical suffix-købing.

In 1863 the firstlocal government acts were implemented in Sweden. There were two acts, one forcities and one for rural areas. Of the around 2,500 municipalities, 89 hadcity rights and thus had the right to call themselvesstad (city). Under the "rural" act there were also eight localities given the status ofköping, which positioned them between a rural municipality and a town (seemunicipalköping). The number of localities designated asköping rose dramatically during the 20th century and reached its peak in 1959, when they were 95. Many new settlements during the industrialization of Sweden, as well as some of the suburbs in the metropolitan areas, first received the title ofköping and it was also made part of their name (such as Linköping or Nyköping).^{[clarification needed]} They later grew further and received town privileges, but kept theköping ending of their names.^{[citation needed]} See the list below. It has been found that a vast majority, nearly 70%, of such designated market-towns lie within an area of 200 km² (77 sq mi) in south-central Sweden, especially in the highly economically productive region immediately west and south of Stockholm, inSödermanland,Örebro,Östergötland, andJönköping counties.

A large-scale merger of Swedish municipalities in 1971 removed the distinctions between towns, market towns and rural municipalities. Many of the former market towns are now seats of municipalities. In contrast to the termstad,köping is seldom used in everyday speech today.

• Municipalities of Sweden
• List of cities in Sweden
• Stad (Sweden)
• Urban areas of Sweden

• Populated places in Sweden
• Market towns in Sweden
• Former administrative divisions of Sweden

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles needing additional references from December 2009
• All articles needing additional references
• Wikipedia articles needing clarification from April 2013
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from April 2013