First of all, even though my name is spelled with two t's, it's pronounced "Bree-ta", and it is not short for anything like Brittany, Bridget, etc...just Britta. My mom says she heard a native Swede pronounce it that way, or at least closer to "Bree-ta" than "Brih-ta", but since my mom cannot exactly duplicate what she heard the Swede say, I have to take her word for it, but I do like the sound of "Bree-ta" better myself, too. Even though I've heard from lots of different Brittas due to having this wesbite, so far only a few of the others pronounce it "Bree-ta"...

(For more butcherings of my name as well as other Brittas, see the Nicknames of Brittas Worldwide page)

I do like my name, but very early on I learned to deal with no one ever pronouncing it correctly the first time. I try to be patient and give people a few chances to start remembering it, since I realize the English grammar rules for the double consontant making the previous vowel short supercede in everyone's consciousness, but once you've known me for a few weeks, I do expect you to be able to remember by then. :-) Hearing myself called "Brih-ta" really bugs me...so much that a friend in highschool wrote my name phonetically in my yearbook to make sure I understood he was pronouncing it "Brih-ta" just to annoy me!

My parents were the ones who picked the spelling & pronunciation of my name. (It is also a good thing I am the only daughter, since Britta was the only name they both liked for a girl) Since they were living in Tacoma, Washington, at the time, where Peterson is a VERY common name, they wanted something unique, and since my dad is half-Swedish, and my mom is Norwegian and Swedish, they were going for something Scandinavian. They liked the sound of "Bree-ta", but they didn't like it spelled "Brita" as it was in the baby name books. Then the newspaper had an article about an SAS airlines plane crash, and a stewardess named "Britta" was quoted...voila!

And, yes, I do get the water filter comments all the time. The whole reason I have finally put a link to the Brita water filter website on my index page was beacuse people actually kept e-mailing me for water filter information! I even had someone ask me for details since he wanted to export the filters to Central America! I still get e-mail from people who only came across my site because they were searching for the water filter, but they stayed to surf around and enjoyed the rest of the site... :-)

Any more questions? Feel free to e-mail me...