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"The Helvetii, a Celtic tribe who battled Julius Caesar, gave their name to the Swiss territory. The Latin name for the country, Helvetia, still appears on Swiss stamps. The letters CH appearing on Swiss cars and in internet addresses stand for the Latin words Confoederatio Helvetica, meaning Swiss Confederation."

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[-] emogu@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

I would have guessed it stood for chocolate

[-] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

That's how I remember it. Swiss chocolate.

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.one 6 points 1 year ago
[-] infeeeee@lemm.ee 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Usually when you include the dot it's called TLD or ccTLD (Top Level Domain or Country Code Top Level Domain). Country codes as in ISO 3166 are without the dot, and written with capital letters, and they predate the internet, first published in 1974. The tlds were based on these codes.

There are some minor differences, e.g United States Minor Outlying Islands (UM) and Western Sahara (EH) have a country code, but no tlds were implemented.

Edit: In the article it's correctly written as CH

[-] lunaticneko@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago

Sometimes I wonder if Fitbit could have its Swiss website with the domain being fitbit.ch

[-] Jhogenbaum@leminal.space 11 points 1 year ago

Helvetica the font is the centerpost of swiss communication and recent graphic design history/culture.

[-] lazylion_ca@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago

For those wondering, the tld for China is .cn

[-] Visstix@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I knew it was for Switzerland since I see it on their numberplates, but I honestly never questioned what it even stood for. So thanks for that :)

[-] DrugsMcChrist@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

I feel so, so stupid right now.

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

Hey, I've been doing this 30 years and just learned it today, you have NOTHING to feel bad about. :)

[-] DrugsMcChrist@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

It's not that .ch is a Swiss domain in particular, and more that I've seen websites with that suffix for years and just automatically assumed that they were Chinese, when in retrospect it didn't even make sense. Like, wow, all these Chinese websites are surprisingly anglo-friendly and the translations aren't messing with the layout at all.

[-] runblack@reddthat.com 4 points 1 year ago

Ironic that the Helvetii fought the Romans only for their descendants to use a Latin abbreviation as their country code :D

this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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