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Summary
- Brittany is not in the Bible and has no Hebrew or biblical meaning. Brittney and Britney are variant spellings.
- It is the English name of Bretagne, the region of northwestern France named for Britons who settled there from Great Britain between the late fourth and sixth centuries.
- The name comes from the Latin Britannia, “land of the Britons,” and the Greek Prettanikē of the explorer Pytheas, around 320 BC.
- The Celtic people-name behind it, Pritani, may have meant “the painted ones” or “the tattooed folk”; the meaning is not certain.
- Brittany’s patron saints are Saint Anne, whom tradition names as the mother of the Virgin Mary, and Saint Yves (1253–1303), “advocate of the poor.”
- As an American girl’s name Brittany entered the top 1,000 in 1971, ranked third from 1989 to 1991, and fell to 928th by 2025.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Behind the Name, “Brittany,” “Brittney” and “Britney,” with United States popularity figures from Social Security Administration data. https://www.behindthename.com/name/brittany
- “Brittany,” Wikipedia, on the name, the Briton migrations, the seven founder saints, the Tro Breizh, and the patron saints Anne and Yves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany
- “Britain (place name),” Wikipedia, on Pytheas, Prettanikē and the Celtic Pritani. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain_(place_name)
- “Bretaña” and “Gran Bretaña,” Wikipedia in Spanish. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretaña
- “Samson of Dol” and “Paul Aurelian,” Wikipedia, on the seven founder saints of Brittany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_of_Dol
- “Saint Anne,” Wikipedia, on the Gospel of James, the name Hannah and the shrine at Sainte-Anne-d’Auray. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Anne
- “Ivo of Kermartin,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivo_of_Kermartin
- Scripture reference: 1 Samuel 1 (Hannah, mother of Samuel).
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