Firstly, Cwens refers to a historical group of people or an alliance of fishermen, hunters and warriors, usually associated with a western Finnic people. The only sources of Cwens are Anglo-Saxon chronicles and Norse sagas where e.g. Orkneyinga saga states that they ruled in Cwenland (presumably along the coast shore of Gulf of Bothnia) and their active period is by historians estimated to be ca. 800-1100 AD. Althought findings are sparsesome, judging from grave findings in Ostrobothnia, there are some archaeology support of a class based hierarchy, presumably based on fur trade, where a leading class can have consist of Swedish traders or an upper class of domestic origin, but they are dated to 6th century.

The term Cwen is first used in Account of the Viking Othere voyage to Northern Scandinavia (or Arctic Ocean) ca. 9th century, where "Cwenaland" was located above "Sweoland". The term was used to distinguish reindeer herders (called Fenni) from non-herders (called Cwen). The old viewpoint that Cwen is equal to (Finnish) "Kainulaiset" (Ostrobothnians) and "Kainuu" (Ostrobothnia) has not found etymological acceptance by some researchers. The spelling Quen is used in latin texts from the 17th century. It was previously assumed by historians that regions in Southern Lapland and below were not inhabited by South Sami groups, and hence Cwens were the aboriginals of those regions. However, this statement is not supported by modern research.

Secondly, the term Cwen (or Kven) refers to the Finnish minority people in north Norway, who settled there during the 16th century. They speak a Finnish dialect. Cwen Finnish is mostly like Finnish, but has many Norwegian loanwords, e.g. tyskäläinen ("German" Norw. tysk, Finn. saksalainen). The Finnish Kainuu dialect (or people) is of the same origin. (See also: Tornedalians)

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