From Wikipedia:
Helvetia is the female
national personification of Switzerland, officially
Confœderatio Helvetica, the "Helvetic Confederation".
The allegory is typically
pictured in a flowing gown, with a spear and a shield
emblazoned with the Swiss flag, and commonly with braided
hair, commonly with a wreath as a symbol of confederation.
The name is a derivation of the ethnonym
Helvetii, the name of the
Gaulish tribe inhabiting the Swiss Plateau prior to the
Roman conquest.
The Helvetia figure first appears in 1672, in a play by
Johann Caspar Weissenbach, as a symbol of unity of the Old
Swiss Confederacy in the face of the denominational disputes
initiated by the Swiss Reformation. Identification of the
Swiss as "Helvetians" (Hélvetiens) becomes common in the
18th century, particularly in the French language, as in
François-Joseph-Nicolas d'Alt de Tieffenthal's very
patriotic Histoire des Hélvetiens (1749–53) followed by
Alexander Ludwig von Wattenwyl's Histoire de la
Confédération hélvetique (1754). Helvetia appears in
patriotic and political artwork in the context of the
construction of a national history and identity in the early
19th century, after the disintegration of the Napoleonic
Helvetic Republic, and she appears on official federal coins
and stamps from the foundation of Switzerland as a federal
state in 1848.
The Swiss Confederation continues to use the name in its
Latin form when it is inappropriate or inconvenient to use
any or all of its four official languages. Thus, the name
appears on postage stamps, coins and other uses; the full
name, Confœderatio Helvetica, is abbreviated for uses such
as the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 and vehicle registration code CH,
and the ccTLD, .ch.
