A village is a human settlement or a residential community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town; some geographers describe villages as having between 500 and 2,500 inhabitants. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighborhoods. Villages are normally permanent, with fixed dwellings, however, transient villages also exist. Further, the dwellings of a village are fairly close to one another, not scattered broadly over the landscape, as a dispersed settlement. In the past, villages were a usual form of community for societies that practiced subsistence agriculture and also for some non-agricultural societies. In Great Britain, a hamlet earned the right to be called a village when it built a church.Dr Greg Stevenson, "What is a Village?" , Exploring British Villages, BBC, 2006, accessed 20 October 2009 In many cultures, towns and cities were few, with only a small proportion of the population living in them. The Industrial Revolution attracted people in larger numbers to work in mills and factories; the concentration of people caused many villages to grow into towns and cities. This also enabled specialization of labor and crafts and the development of many trades. The trend of urbanization continues but not always in connection with industrialization. Historically, homes were situated together for sociability and defence, and land surrounding the living quarters was farmed. Traditional fishing villages were based on artisan fishing and located adjacent to fishing grounds.
In toponomastic terminology, the names of individual villages are called Comonyms (from Ancient Greek κώμη / village and ὄνυμα / name, [cf. ὄνομα]).
Etymology From Middle English village, from Old French village, from Latin villāticus, ultimately from Latin villa (English villa).
Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent
Afghanistan In Afghanistan, the village, or deh (Dari/Pashto: ده) is a mid-size settlement type in Afghan society, trumping the United States hamlet or qala (Dari: قلعه, Pashto: کلي), though smaller than the town, or shār (Dari: شهر, Pashto: ښار). In contrast to the qala, the deh is generally a bigger settlement which includes a commercial area, while the yet larger shār includes governmental buildings and services such as schools of higher education, basic health care, police stations etc.
India
"The soul of India lives in its villages," declared Mahatma GandhiR.K. Bhatnagar. India's Membership of Iter Project . Press Information Bureau. Government of India, Bangalore at the beginning of 20th century. According to the 2011 census of India, 69% of Indians (around 833 million people) live in villages. Per the 2011 census of India, there were a total of 649,481 villages in India. The size of these villages varies considerably. 236,004 Indian villages have a population of fewer than 500, while 3,976 villages have a population of 10,000+. Most of the villages have their own temple, mosque, or church, or two and more than two of the above depending on the local religious following.
Pakistan
The majority of Pakistanis live in rural areas. According to the 2023 census, about 61% of the Pakistani population lives in rural areas. Most rural areas in Pakistan tend to be near cities, and are peri-urban areas. This is due to the definition of a rural area in Pakistan being an area that does not fall within an urban boundary. A village is called deh or gaaon in Urdu. Pakistani village life is marked by kinship and exchange relations.
Kazakhstan
Auyl () is a Kazakh word meaning "village" in Kazakhstan.Қазақ тілі термиңдерінің салалық ғылыми түсіндірме сөздігі: География және геодезия. — Алматы: "Мектеп" баспасы, 2007. — 264 бет. According to the 2009 census of Kazakhstan, 42.7% of Kazakhstani citizens (7.5 million people) live in 8172 different villages.. To refer to this concept along with the word "auyl" often used the Slavic word "selo" in Northern Kazakhstan.
East Asia
China
In mainland China, villages are divisions under townships or towns.
Taiwan
In the Republic of China (Taiwan), villages are divisions under townships or county-administered cities. The village is called a tsuen or cūn (村) under a rural township (鄉) and a li (里) under an urban township (鎮) or a county-controlled city. See also Li (unit).
Japan
Villages in Japan are considered as local public bodies and subdivisions of rural districts. There are currently 183 recorded villages, but due to merging and status elevation, this number is decreasing.
South Korea
Southeast Asia Malay Archipelago
A kampong (Za'aba Spelling) or kampung (modern Malay) is a type of village in Southeast Asia, particularly in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore. The term applies to traditional villages, especially of the indigenous peoples living in this region.
Brunei
In Brunei, villages are officially the third- and lowest-level subdivisions of Brunei below districts and mukims. A village is locally known by the Malay word (also spelt as ). They may be villages in the traditional or anthropological sense but may also comprise delineated residential settlements, both rural and urban. The community of a village is headed by a village head (). Communal infrastructure for the villagers may include a primary school, a religious school providing or Islamic religious primary education which is compulsory for the Muslim pupils in the country, a mosque, and a community centre ( or ).
Indonesia
In Indonesia, depending on the principles they are administered, villages are called kampung or desa (or kelurahan for those with urban functions). A desa (a term that derives from a Sanskrit word meaning "country" that is found in the name "Bangladesh"=bangla and desh/desha) is administered according to traditions and customary law (adat), while a kelurahan is administered along more "modern" principles. Desa are generally located in rural areas while kelurahan are generally urban subdivisions. A village head is respectively called kepala desa or lurah. Both are elected by the local community. A desa or kelurahan is the subdivision of a kecamatan (district), in turn the subdivision of a (regency) or kota (city).
The same general concept applies all over Indonesia. However, there is some variation among the vast numbers of Austronesian ethnic groups. For instance, in Bali villages have been created by grouping traditional hamlets or banjar, which constitute the basis of Balinese social life. In the Minangkabau area in West Sumatra province, traditional villages are called nagari (a term deriving from another Sanskrit word meaning "city", which can be found in the name like "Srinagar"=sri and nagar/nagari). In some areas such as Tanah Toraja, elders take turns watching over the village at a command post. As a general rule, desa and kelurahan are groupings of hamlets (kampung in Indonesian, dusun in Javanese, banjar in Bali). a kampung is defined today as a village in Brunei and Indonesia.
Malaysia and Singapore Kampung is a term used in Malaysia, (sometimes spelling kampong or kompong in the English language) for "a Malay hamlet or village in a Malay-speaking country". In Malaysia, a kampung is determined as a locality with 10,000 or fewer people. Since historical times, every Malay village came under the leadership of a penghulu (village chief), who has the power to hear civil matters in his village (see Courts of Malaysia for more details).
A Malay village typically contains a mosque or surau, paddy fields and Malay houses on stilts. Malay and Indonesian villagers practice the culture of helping one another as a community, which is better known as "joint bearing of burdens" (gotong royong).Geertz, Clifford. "Local Knowledge: Fact and Law in Comparative Perspective", pp. 167–234 in Geertz Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, NY: Basic Books. 1983. They are family-oriented (especially the concept of respecting one's family [particularly the parents and elders]), courtesy and practice belief in God as paramount to everything else. It is common to see a cemetery near the mosque. In Sarawak and East Kalimantan, some villages are called 'long', primarily inhabited by the Orang Ulu.
Malaysian kampung were once aplenty in Singapore but there are almost no remaining kampung villages; the very few to have survived until today are mostly on outlying islands surrounding mainland Singapore, such as Pulau Ubin. Mainland Singapore used to have many kampung villages but modern developments and rapid urbanisation works have seen them bulldozed away; Kampong Lorong Buangkok is the last surviving village on the country's mainland.
The term "kampung", sometimes spelled "kampong", is one of many Malay words to have entered common usage in Malaysia and Singapore. Locally, the term is frequently used to refer to either one's hometown or a rural village, depending on the intended context.
Philippines In urban areas of the Philippines, the term "village" most commonly refers to private subdivisions, especially gated communities. These villages emerged in the mid-20th century and were initially the domain of elite urban dwellers. Those are common in major cities in the country and their residents have a wide range of income levels.
Such villages may or may not correspond to a barangay (the country's basic unit of government, also glossed as village), or be privately administered. Barangays correspond more to precolonial villages; the chairman (formerly the village datu) now settles administrative, intrapersonal, and political matters or polices the area though with much less authority and respect than in Indonesia or Malaysia.
In the southern Philippines which is dominated by Moro Muslims, the word kampung was also adopted, but in a Hispanized form, becoming campo. This name itself was originally the influence of the Malayanized Muslim powers that had triumphed in the south of the Philippines, such as the Sultanate of Sulu, Sultanate of Maguindanao, Sultanate of Buayan, and Sultanates of Lanao. Especially the Sultanate of Sulu, because it is close to the spread of Malay culture, its influence is very noticeable, in terms of vocabulary, in this case the word kampung. An example of a place called kampung is a barangay in Zamboanga City, namely Campo Islam or Kampung Islam ().
Myanmar
Thailand
Vietnam Villages (làng) made up the basis of Vietnamese society. Vietnamese village is considered one of the typical symbol of Asian agricultural production. Villages in Vietnam typically contains: a village gate, bamboo hedges (lũy tre), a communal house where the tutelary deity (Thành hoàng) is worshiped, a well shared by the whole village, paddy fields (đồng lúa), temples (đền, chùa) and houses of all families in the village. Villagers share the same bloodline and are usually rice farmers, and may also share the same crafts. Village have an important role in Vietnamese society (Vietnamese saying: "Custom rules the law" -"Phép vua thua lệ làng" [literally: the king's law yields to village customs]). It is common for Vietnamese villagers to prefer to be buried in their village upon death.
Central and Eastern Europe
Slavic-speaking countries
Selo (Cyrillic: село) is a Slavic word meaning "village" in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, North Macedonia, Russia, Serbia, and Ukraine. For example, there are numerous sela (села; plural of selo) called Novo Selo (Ново Село, "New Village") in Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, and North Macedonia.
Another Slavic word for a village is ves (; ; ; ; ). In Slovenia, the word selo is used for very small villages (fewer than 100 people) and in dialects; the Slovene word vas is used all over Slovenia. In Russia and Bulgaria, the word ves is archaic, but remains in idioms and locality names, such as Vesyegonsk and Belevehchevo.