Helvetia (/hɛlˈviːʃə/) is a national personification of Switzerland, officially Confoederatio Helvetica, the Swiss Confederation.
The allegory is typically pictured in a flowing clothing, with a spear and a shield emblazoned with the Swiss flag, and commonly with braided hair and 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 before the Roman conquest.
A national personification is an anthropomorphic personification of a state or the people(s) it inhabits. It may appear in political cartoons and propaganda. In the first personifications in the Western World, warrior deities or figures symbolizing wisdom were used (for example the goddess Athena in ancient Greece), to indicate the strength and power of the nation. Some personifications in the Western world often took the Latin name of the ancient Roman province. Examples of this type include Britannia, Germania, Hibernia, Hispania, Lusitania, Helvetia and Polonia.
Examples of personifications of the Goddess of Liberty include Marianne, the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World), and many examples of United States coinage. Another ancient model was Roma, a female deity who personified the city of Rome and her dominion over the territories of the Roman Empire. Roma was probably favoured by Rome's high-status Imperial representatives abroad, rather than the Roman populace at large. In Rome, the Emperor Hadrian built and dedicated a gigantic temple to her as Roma Aeterna ("Eternal Rome"), and to Venus Felix, ("Venus the Bringer of Good Fortune"), emphasising the sacred, universal and eternal nature of the empire. Examples of representations of the everyman or citizenry in addition to the nation itself are Deutscher Michel, John Bull and Uncle Sam.
Polonia, the name for Poland in Latin and many Romance and other languages, is most often used in modern Polish to refer to the Polish diaspora. However, as can be seen from the image, it was also used as a national personification.
The symbolic depiction of a country as a woman called by the Latin name of that country was common in the 19th century (see Germania, Britannia, Hibernia, Helvetia).
The coins of the Swiss franc are the official coins used in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The name of the subunit is centime in French and internationally, Rappen in German, centesimo in Italian, and rap in Romansh.There are coins in denominations of 5 centimes, 10 centimes, 20 centimes, 1⁄2 franc (50 centimes), 1 franc, 2 francs, and 5 francs.
All coins have the legend of either Helvetia or Confœderatio Helvetica, the Latin name of the Swiss Confederation, along with the year number.The 5, 10, and 20 centimes coins show a head of Liberty in profile, designed by Karl Schwenzer (1879). The 1⁄2, 1, and 2 francs coins show a standing figure of the national personification Helvetia, designed by Albert Walch (1860).The 5 francs coin on the obverse shows a portrait of an "alpine herdsman" (Alphirte), designed by Paul Burkhard (1922), and on the reverse the federal coat of arms;additionally it has the inscription Dominus Providebit embossed on the edge.