Student nations or simply nations (Latin: natio meaning "being born"[1][2]) are regional corporations of students at a university. Once widespread across Europe in medieval times, they are now largely restricted to the oldest universities of Sweden and Finland, in part because of the violent conflicts between the nations in university towns in other countries.[citation needed] Medieval universities were cosmopolitan, with students from many different domestic and foreign regions. Students who were born within the same region usually spoke the same language, expected to be ruled by their own familiar laws, and therefore joined together to form the nations. In the English-speaking world, the institutions most closely comparable to the medieval nation system are perhaps the collegiate system of older British universities or fraternities at North American universities, though the comparisons are imperfect. In Portugal and Brazil, there are fraternities called repúblicas, but these are merely residential groups and have nothing to do with place of origin.