The Bretons are an ethnic group located in the region of Brittany in France.

They trace much of their heritage to groups of Brythonic speakers who emigrated from southwestern Great Britain in two waves from the 4th to 6th centuries into the Armorican peninsula, subsequently named Brittany after them.

The main traditional language of Brittany is Breton (Brezhoneg) and is spoken in Western Brittany.

Today Breton is spoken by approximately 365,000 people, of whom about 240,000 speak it fluently.

Another linguistic minority is present in Brittany, namely speakers of the Gallo language; Gallo is only spoken in Eastern Brittany, where Breton has virtually never been.

Breton is closely related to the Brythonic languages Cornish (closely) and Welsh (more distantly) while the Gallo language is a Romance language of the langue d'oil family.

Bretons' native language is mainly French nowadays.

Brittany and its people are included as one of the six Celtic nations.

The actual number of ethnic Bretons in Brittany and France as a whole is difficult to assess as the French government does not take account of such statistics.

The present day population of Brittany based on a January 2007 estimate is 4,365,500.