Etymology

Proper noun

1. A region in North West France.
2. popular in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. By folk etymology sometimes taken to mean "Britain".

Quotations

• 1595 William Shakespeare: Third Part of King Henry the Sixth: Act II, Scene VI:

  And then to Brittany I'll cross the sea,

  To effect this marriage so it please my lord.

• 1990 Alice Munro: Friend of My Youth. ISBN 0679729577 page 102:

  - - - No one has family names. These girls with rooster hair I see on the streets. They pick the names. They're the mothers."

  "I have a granddaughter named Brittany," Hazel said. " And I have heard of a little girl called Cappuccino."

  "Cappuccino! Is that true? Why don't they call one Cassaulet? Fettuccini? Alsace-Lorraine?"

• 1999 Andrew Pyper: Lost Girls: Chapter Ten:

  Names of the times. Borrowed from soap opera characters of prominence fifteen years ago, who have since been replaced by spiffy new models: the social-climbing Brittany now an unscrupulous Burke, the generous Pamela a refitted, urbanized Parker.