Loire-Atlantique now belongs to the Pays de la Loire region while the other four departments make up the Brittany region. Government policies in the 19th and 20th centuries made education compulsory and, at the same time, forbade the use of Breton in schools to push non-French speakers into adopting the French language. Coastal areas are usually named Armor or Arvor ("by the sea" in Breton), and the inland is called Argoat ("by the forest"). This episode would have inspired the duchess' motto: "Potius mori quam foedari" ("rather death than dishonour"). [85] Since the 1920s, the flag has become very popular and it is flown from a large number of institutions. Moreover, the Pays de la Loire region could not exist without Loire-Atlantique, because it would lose its political and economic capital. Brittany is the site of some of the world's oldest standing architecture, home to the Cairn of Barnenez, the Tumulus Saint-Michel and others, which date to the early 5th millennium BC. [22], During the 3rd century AD, the region was attacked several times by Franks, Alamanni and pirates. All the other communes had under 25,000 inhabitants. It was a quite indefinite region that extended along the English Channel coast from the Seine estuary, then along the Atlantic coast to the Loire estuary and, according to several sources, maybe to the Garonne estuary. Arzhela - meaning "princess" or "bears". TGV services also link the region with major cities in France such as Lyon, Strasbourg, Marseille, and Lille. According to popular traditions, Anne of Brittany was hunting with her court when she saw a white ermine who preferred to die than to cross a dirty marsh. The cantons serve as an electoral district for the election of the dpartement councils and arrondissements are run by a subprefect appointed by the French president. Such names are common throughout western Brittany. Brittany Language and Languages FamilySearch 53% of them considering themselves to belong first to Brittany. Saint-Malo then was known for its corsairs, Brest was a major base for the French Navy and Nantes flourished with the Atlantic slave trade. Boiteux French, Breton. For the Breton nationalists, it was an occasion to recreate Brittany as a political and administrative entity, but the new region had to be economically efficient. var e=document.createElement('script');e.setAttribute('type','text/javascript');e.setAttribute('charset','UTF-8');e.setAttribute('src','https://static.typepad.com/.shared//js/pinmarklet.js?r='+Math.random()*99999999);document.body.appendChild(e); The most impressive castles can be seen along the border with France, where stand the Chteau de Fougres, the Chteau de Vitr, the Chteau de Chteaubriant and the Chteau de Clisson. Both historians describe Riothamus's losing battle against King Euric of the Visigoths at Dols around the year 470. The Greek word itself comes from the common Brythonic ethnonym reconstructed as *Pritan, itself from Proto-Celtic *kritanoi (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ker- 'to cut, make'). Others smaller airport operates domestic flights in Quimper, and Lannion. The latinised form was Corentinus, whereas Kaourent / Kaourantin is the Breton. The Route du Rhum, the Transat Qubec-Saint-Malo, the Jules Verne Trophy are the main Breton sailing competitions. The valleys themselves were a result of a strong tectonic activity between the African and the Eurasian plate. This article is about the cultural region in the northwest of France. Some suggest that he was a Breton, though others believe that he was from Britain, pointing to the passage that he arrived in the land of the Biturges "by way of Ocean", which would hardly have been efficient or required for a Breton. They are known as the "Seven founder saints": Other notable early missionaries are Gildas and the Irish saint Columbanus. Bollor derives from bod which means bush and lore which means laurel in Breton. Architecture from the 20th century can be seen in Saint-Nazaire, Brest and Lorient, three cities destroyed during the Second World War and rebuilt afterwards, and in the works of the Breton nationalist architects like James Bouill and Olier Mordrel. ", Ronec- From roen"of (royal) lineage." Apply this search to the user-submitted names, the letters in the pattern are compared to the letters in the name, search for an exact phrase by surrounding it with double quotes, this field understands simple boolean logic, force a term to be included by preceding it with a, force a term to be excluded by preceding it with a, sounds can only be searched in names that have been assigned pronunciations, syllables can only be counted in names that have been assigned pronunciations, names without pronunciations are excluded from results, the "relationship" is how the name relates to its parent name, name impressions are based on the ratings left by the behindthename.com community. The designs have a strong traditional Breton influence, but Orientalism and Art Deco have also been used. The dukes were crowned in Rennes and they had a large castle there; it was however destroyed during the 15th century. [citation needed], During the protohistorical period, Brittany was inhabited by five Celtic tribes:[19], Those people had strong economic ties to the Insular Celts, especially for the tin trade[citation needed]. At the time, the written word was not common so the spelling of names varied from tribe to tribe and even within families. La Folle Journe, in Nantes, is the largest classical music festival in France. They were built with local materials: mostly granite in Lower Brittany and schist in Upper Brittany. For example, the popular Breton name Soazig is immediately identifiable to a French local as being a female name, (just because a local may know several people with that name), but to a foreigner this may not be obvious. Stronger alcohols include the chouchen, a sort of mead made with wild honey, and an apple eau de vie called lambig. The penitents form a procession and they walk together to a shrine, a church or any sacred place. Brittany has the same education system as the rest of France. His feast, 19 May, is Brittany's national day. These realms eventually merged into a single state during the 9th century. Because of their origins and practice, Breton and Gallo can be compared to Scottish Gaelic and Scots language in Scotland[citation needed]. The Duchy was legally abolished with the French Revolution that began in 1789 - and in 1790 the province of Brittany was divided into five departments: Ctes-du-Nord (later Ctes-d'Armor), Finistre, Ille-et-Vilaine, Loire-Infrieure (later Loire-Atlantique) and Morbihan. Local seaports like Brest and Saint-Brieuc quickly expanded, and Lorient, first spelled "L'Orient", was founded in the 17th century. Brittany has also been referred to as Little Britain (as opposed to Great Britain, with which it shares an etymology). The ermine, or stoat, as an animal became the badge of John IV at the end of the 14th century. The Utopiales international science fiction festival is held in the same city. In the meantime, several laws were promoted to open schools, notably for girls. The best soils were primitively covered by large forests which had been progressively replaced by bocage during the Middle Ages. Professional footballers coming from the region also form the Brittany national football team which sometimes plays with national teams. He also used American rock and roll in his works and influenced 1970s Breton bands such as Kornog, Gwerz (band)[fr] and Tri Yann, who revived traditional songs and made them popular across France. Enora- Breton form of Honora. Gallo was simply felt to be an incorrect way of speaking French rather than a separate language. Brittany has over 2,860km (1,780mi) of coastline; it represents a third of the total French coastline. [This paragraph needs citation(s)], Nantes is linked to Paris by the A11 autoroute, and Rennes is both on the A81 autoroute to Paris and the A84 autoroute to Caen. Yann Tiersen, who composed the soundtrack for Amlie, the Electro band Yelle and the avant-garde singer Brigitte Fontaine are also from Brittany. The Bretons of Brittany, France - Owlcation On one hand, the region, due to its long coastline, has a rich oceanic fauna, and some birds cannot be seen in other French regions. For instance, the name of the region in that language can be written Bertayn in ELG script, or Bertgn in MOGA, and a couple of other scripts also exist.[15]. However, most of the population remained rural. The Armoricans supplied archers who attacked the Huns' front lines during the main battle and thwarted Attila's night assault on the Roman camp with a hail of arrows "like rain". Loire-Atlantique has two major cities, Nantes, with 309,346 inhabitants and an urban area encompassing 972,828, and Saint-Nazaire, with 69,993 inhabitants. There, ruins of a castle surrounded by a lake are associated with the Lady of the Lake, a dolmen is said to be Merlin's tomb and a path is presented as Morgan le Fay's Val sans Retour. At that time, local writers started to collect and publish local tales and legends and wrote original works. The Kan ha diskan is the most common type of singing. Brittany was proverbially wealthy throughout much of its history: it prospered from trade before and during Roman rule, mid-ninth century legal documents reveal peasant landowners suing lords for trespass. It is also the seat of an ecclesiastical province encompassing Brittany and the Pays de la Loire region. Thus, free schools were opened in almost every villages of Brittany. [86] The motto has later been reused by Breton regiments, local World War II Resistants and cultural movements. Some of these lords were powerful rivals. Major sites include the Chteau des ducs de Bretagne, the last permanent residence of the dukes, which displays the transition from late Gothic to Renaissance style. Wine, especially muscadet, is made in a small region south of Nantes. . Without the Loire-Atlantique's figures, the Breton population only numbered 2.4million in 1962, nearly unchanged from its population of 2.3million in 1851. Nantes specialised in shipbuilding and food processing (sugar, exotic fruits and vegetables, fish), Fougres in glass and shoe production, and metallurgy was practised in small towns such as Chteaubriant and Lochrist, known for its labour movements.
