Place and Brand Names in Contemporary Breton Media: French Borrowings and Official Prescription

Investigating the links between language and identity among speakers of the minoritised languages of France offers insight into how these speakers react to the linguistic dominance of French. This paper focuses on Breton, drawing on the category of ‘néo-bretonnants’, speakers who acquire Breton through formal education and/or later in life; these speakers are said to be more prepared to use Breton beyond their local communities and to prefer a re-Celticized lexis over the French borrowings used by traditional speakers. The study investigates how this plays out in the Breton found in a selection of media sources, focusing on place names and the names of brands and organizations. While much of the variation observed on a broad level can be related to differences in subject matter, the data also reveal that the level of conformance with stereotypical ‘néo-bretonnant’ practices can vary, and that there is room for lexical variation, indicating a range of attitudes on the part of speakers towards how the language should be used.