Why does Swiss German say “Geiß” instead of “Ziege”?

Swiss and Alpine German prefer Geiß (plural Geißen) for “goat” over the Standard German Ziege. The word survives across Swiss farming, Bavarian and Austrian dialects, and is the same one used in Johanna Spyri’s Heidi (1881), where the grandfather keeps Geißen on the alp. Ziege is the textbook German word, but Geiß is what alpine farmers actually say.

This clip is a portrait of a Swiss banker who quit her job to raise Geißen full-time. “Ich bin schon als Kind auf der Alp Geißen melken gegangen” (“As a kid, I already went up on the alp to milk goats”). The word Geiß signals Alpine farming culture in a single syllable.