The area known to the Romans as Armorica was renamed Brittany ('Little Britain') after the people who migrated there from Britain, particularly from Cornwall, in the 6th century AD.

Between 1880 to the middle of the 20th century, Breton was banned from schools and children were punished for speaking it. This changed in 1951 with the promulgation of the Deixonne law, which allowed for the Breton language and culture to be taught for one to three hours a week in public education if the teacher is willing and able to do so. Since then a number of schools and colleges have been set up providing either education through the medium of Breton or bilingual Breton/French education.

For most of its history there was considerable variation in the spelling of Breton. Then in 1908 the orthography of three Breton dialects, Kerneveg (Cornouaille), Leoneg (Leon) and Tregerieg (Tregor), was unified. The other dialect, Gwenedeg (Vannetais), was not included in this reform, but was included in the orthographic reform of 1941.