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Posted by NaOH 17 hours ago

How does IKEA come up with names for its products?(www.ikea.com)
368 points | 256 comments
markvdb 3 hours ago|
> Every possible product name is carefully checked to avoid undesirable meanings in other languages, political or religious affiliations and fit into our global profile.

I present to you "Svalka" wine glasses. Dump", rubbish heap", or easy, promiscuous woman of ill repute in informal Baltic (and Slavic?) slang.

cheeseface 1 hour ago||
Svalka has been around from at least year 2000. Might even be one of the reasons for the current practice.
tecleandor 2 hours ago|||
I have a "Särna" chair. "Sarna" in Spanish is "Scabies".

Fun fact: Although "Sarna" comes from Latin, seems like it's only used in Romance languages present in the Iberian Peninsula (Galician, Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish...) and not for example in Italian, Romanian or French, as it's an Iberian loan word. Most other languages derive from another different Latin word, "scabiēs".

memsom 2 hours ago||
The umlaut does mean that to a Swede it is not the same word sound at all. I can only guess that is why it was allowed?
sureMan6 51 minutes ago||
The sound is still very close in this situation (ä before r) my guess is they didn't have the Spanish sarna on their radar
selfmodruntime 1 hour ago|||
I swear this is untrue. Half the names of ikea products allude to funny words in German.
froh 1 hour ago||
funny indeed!

but no trash talk, no swear words, nothing gross or offending.

fangspire 3 hours ago|||
My favorite Ikea product name.
pseudohadamard 1 hour ago|||
Do IKEA have farthinders in their parking lots?
sebcat 54 minutes ago||
No, they are slut
mszcz 1 hour ago||
I mean, if you were to use that name for an IKEA product, you can do worse than wine glasses :P

A bed would be a little too on the nose I think.

dspillett 3 hours ago||
> Every possible product name is carefully checked to avoid undesirable meanings in other languages

This procedure does not always work: https://adland.tv/whats-name-case-2351-ikeas-gutvik-bunk-bed

senko 16 hours ago||
My favorite is `fejka` for the artificial plant/flower.

I think "being as widely-understandable pun as possible" is definitely one of their naming priorities.

kube-system 11 hours ago||
Want a nice wardrobe? Well vuk u, you get this one:

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/vuku-wardrobe-white-80331973/

Need an end table that is lacking?

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/lack-side-table-white-30449908/

koolba 11 hours ago|||
> Need an end table that is lacking?

End table? That’s a server rack: https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/List_of_IkeaRacks

djhworld 13 minutes ago|||
Sadly the materials in the lack changed over time, the insides are basically just cardboard honeycomb with a thin veneer around it.

So if you want to follow the lack mods on the web, especially ones written in the 2010s, you need to make sure you strengthen the legs to accommodate the hardware

cassianoleal 23 minutes ago||||
Server rack? That’s a 3D printer enclosure!

https://www.printables.com/model/76318-ikea-lack-enclosure-3...

senko 1 hour ago||||
I love Lack, really versatile piece of furniture/equipment! Not lacking at all :)
tarxvf 6 hours ago|||
server lack
Walf 10 hours ago|||
"Hey, Dana…”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T2oje4cYxw

rimliu 2 hours ago||
Mine too. It was such a delight seeing it for the first time. Still brings a smile many years later.
hk__2 16 hours ago||
> Did you know that we name around 2,000-3,000 new products every year?

I find this surprisingly high; I guess it’s _products_ and not _names_, meaning that five colors of the same product count as five new products but only one name.

eloisant 3 hours ago|
They don't just sell furnitures, there is all the small accessories like cutting boards, plates, bowls, towels, cushions... Everything they're selling at their lowest floor before you reach the self-serve warehouse.
7734128 16 hours ago||
The door mats are mostly named after places in Denmark, as they should be.
jxub 1 hour ago||
And one of them, "Trampa", means "trap" or "cheating" in Spanish
matsemann 54 minutes ago||
means "to step" or "step on" in Swedish, at least.
ErikCorry 16 hours ago|||
The toilet seat is named after the strait between Denmark and Sweden. https://youtu.be/ajBN0Xypi0I
reaperducer 16 hours ago||
The door mats should be named after doors, and the place mats named after places.
dotancohen 2 hours ago||
Maybe the door mats should be called Matthew, Matityahu, Matti, Mattes, Matthias.

The rubber ducky (yes, they sell one) could be called Bob.

azibi 15 hours ago||
Fun Dutch observation: IKEA’s ANTILOP high chair sounds like “anti lopen” in Dutch. “lopen” = “to walk” So the name can be interpreted as “anti walking” or “prevents your baby from walking away.” I know it’s actually named after the animal (antelope), but the accidental Dutch wordplay is perfect for a baby chair.
Eduard 16 hours ago||
> contain between 4 and 12 letters

PAX

https://www.ikea.com/de/en/cat/pax-system-19086/

kzrdude 14 hours ago||
Is also a Swedish word, though slang, the imperative form of paxa which basically means the same as "dibs!" If I know my english colloquialisms correctly.
sixtyj 5 hours ago|||
The exception that proves the rule :)

It reminds some system - they didn’t allow “other” category for sorting features, but someone came with “999” :)

kripy 4 hours ago||
Clue to their DB setup?
fy20 16 hours ago||
For a Swede it must seem kind of strange to understand the product names. You see an ACORN toy, a NIGEL bookshelf, and the CROYDON sofa... which sounds like it belongs in a council estate flat.

Definately more fun would be the Polish version. How many people can pronounce the BYDGOSZCZ sofa, the PRZEMYSŁAW bookcase and the PSZCZOŁA soft toy?

MajorBee 13 hours ago||
> BYDGOSZCZ sofa

This may not even be that far off from reality, looking at the sort of names rando brands on Amazon often have...

Inityx 4 hours ago|||
No joke, I came across a cosmetics brand recently called "Pooplunch"
simondotau 3 hours ago||
Genius strategy for earning organic social media
dylan604 10 hours ago|||
At least BYDGOSZCZ is a real word in a real language
pseudohadamard 1 hour ago|||
Note to self: Change WiFi password, some bastard has posted it to HN for everyone to see.
mikestorrent 10 hours ago|||
Place looks pretty nice, too.
Agentlien 4 hours ago|||
As a Swede, I always enjoy Ikea product names. Many of them are based on their actual function or category. Some are wordplay related to this. For example:

Rinnig - a kitchen towel called "runny"

Skaftet - a series of standing lamps and lamp stands called "the shaft"

Fejka - plastic plants literally called "to fake"

Knöckla - A garbage bin called "crumple up"

Some I don't get but are still funny

Ostbit - wooden serving tongs called "piece of cheese"?

Sharlin 3 hours ago||
I guess you can use the tongs to serve pieces of cheese.
nine_k 16 hours ago|||
If the goal is something that reads weird for most Europeans, then try picking names from Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, or Welsh.
noir_lord 16 hours ago|||
My missus is Hungarian, I'm sure it's a lovely language but it just sounds like Klingon to me.

Which makes it hilarious when she's annoyed at the boy.

pndy 16 hours ago||
The fact that Sz in Hungarian reads as s and other way around, S becomes sh - is mind-boggling especially for Poles, where Sz is pronounced as sh. and S remains s.
nine_k 14 hours ago||
In Spanish "z" always sounds [s] (except in Spain where it sounds [θ]), but "s" can often sound [z].
decimalenough 14 hours ago||||
Funnily enough, there are quite a few IKEA products with Finnish names. (Most are place names from northern Sweden, where there's a significant Finnish minority.)
teiferer 4 hours ago||
The Tornedalen people are kinda their own group with their own language (Meänkieli). To an outsider it might sound like Finnish, but it's not much closer to Finnish than Yiddish is to German.
jltsiren 3 hours ago|||
Meänkieli split from what became the Torne Valley dialects of Finnish in 1809, when an international border suddenly appeared in the middle of the region. To a Finnish speaker it sounds like a bit old-fashioned dialect, but it's mostly intelligible. It's definitely closer to standard Finnish than Karelian, which takes a lot of effort to understand.
Sharlin 3 hours ago|||
Not so sure. As a native Finnish speaker, I'd say most of us would understand Meänkieli just fine, especially anyone raised on the coastal areas where colloquial Swedish loans are more common in general.
throw-the-towel 13 hours ago||||
Now I want a HÉTFŐ desk, and a SZÉKESFEHÉRVÁR... something.
bobthepanda 5 hours ago||||
Basque would be truly weird since it is one of a few known language isolates
retired 6 hours ago||||
Imagine an alternative reality where a KALLAX is a ԿԱԼԼԱՔՍ and the stores have pushy salesmen with impressive amounts of visible chest hair.
bberkgaut 4 hours ago|||
the joke is a bit too hairy to my taste, and yet I can't help but imagine how good would be the restaurant in that reality!
ccozan 3 hours ago||
I heard the raktajino is really good! Qapla'!
orthoxerox 3 hours ago|||
Their ads could star the Kardashians.
fragmede 12 hours ago|||
You really wanna get weird, there's those continents of Asia, Africa, and South America, full of different sounds to use for names. Ikea is Swedish, so they get to propagate Swedish culture to the rest of the world.
pseudohadamard 1 hour ago|||
I can just imagine Chinese IKEA, their entire product list would be Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī Shì shì shì shì.
psunavy03 10 hours ago|||
With a side of tasty meatballs.
dylan604 10 hours ago||
I've had tasty meatballs. It was the lingonberry sauce that I was introduced from Ikea.
necovek 4 hours ago|||
I'd love seeing some Polish names in products and learning their pronounciation: but as a fellow Slavic language speaker (which there are hundreds of millions of, compared to 10 or 20 million Swedish speakers), I imagine I can do a pretty good job. So I think Swedish is still globally more playful.

(I'd read it as БИЂОШЧ/БИДГОШЧ, ПРЗЕМИСЛАВ and ПШЧОЛА/ПШЧОЉА — you can check on Google Translate if I am close :))

RugnirViking 16 hours ago|||
its not all that strange tbh - im learning danish which is adjacent enough to swedish that I can understand most of the names - sometimes they aren't relevant to the product function, sometimes they are, but they're just names. Is it strange to you that the word "photoshop" uses english language? what about a Hamburger being named after a place?
fyltr 16 hours ago||
Nitpicking but your examples all have a clear etymology that may even help you deduce the purpose of a thing. Hamburger means 'from Hamburg' and can be short for 'in the style of Hamburg', which sounds perfectly normal to a native. This is, would I say, less strange than if it was named 'Hamburg', which seems to be the case of IKEA furniture. Photoshop, in the same way, seems to refer to a photo workshop, which once again has an etymology, as it refers to the initial purpose of that program, reworking pictures. On the opposite, if things are just named 'for the lulz', and my desk is called Boston, my text editor 'golden retriever' and my lamp acorn, confusion may at some point arise.
schoen 16 hours ago|||
GNOME used to give software applications names of common nouns that were usually not strongly related to their function: Nautilus, Palimpsest, Totem, Tomboy, Seahorse. At some point I think they decided to move away from this because they found many users had a hard time remembering the names.
necovek 1 hour ago|||
The way I remember it, GNOME moved away from funny release codenames all the way back around 2004 or 2005, and then gradually moved to application names reflecting their generic function (eg. gedit was for a long time called "Gnome Text Editor" in the .desktop file, basically hiding the component name in an about dialog, before another "gnome text editor" was introduced to replace it, but I haven't tracked this and maybe it's just a project rename too).

I do believe it is acceptable for software to have playful names. After all, that's how "googling", "tweeting" have entered the vocabulary (and no, nobody is "facebooking"). I am pretty sure global human population is not so dumb to not be able to learn to associate a non-function-reflecting name to its purpose. If anything, it's a marketing thing.

dylan604 10 hours ago|||
Is that rule number one or two in that naming things are hard?
dmurray 15 hours ago||||
How about eating a Sandwich with Turkey, Bologna and Cheddar, maybe with a Paris-Brest for dessert?
wodenokoto 6 hours ago|||
Every furniture chain I’ve been in contact with have had furniture names like “Boston” and “acorn” and is “golden retriever” really that far off from Apple old OS naming scheme with snow leopards, lions and cougars?
victorbjorklund 16 hours ago|||
It is kind of funny sometimes. Sometimes it’s related to what the thing is (like a pun) and sometimes just random
namelosw 13 hours ago|||
Just go to Polish IKEA and buy the Grzegorz table and Brzęczyszczykiewicz chairs …
rubberpoliceman 9 hours ago||
> Brzęczyszczykiewicz

MAUL HALTEN!

shmeeed 2 hours ago||
For everybody who's as lost as I was, the above is a quote from a 1970 polish movie:

https://youtu.be/AfKZclMWS1U

ehnto 8 hours ago|||
I have always thought this about western media. For all of us in non-us countries, the locations, roads and objects are all slightly foreign to us, giving it that other-world feel movies have.

But for those in the US, wouldn't it all be a bit familiar? Whenever I watch a movie set in my home country with home accents and locations, it always feels a bit too familiar and it can cheapen the feel a bit.

MichaelDickens 7 hours ago||
Well, I'm an American, but US media is disproportionately set in Los Angeles or NYC, and I haven't been to either of those places.

I was watching Monk recently, and it feels kinda neat seeing a show shot in San Francisco because I used to live there. I wouldn't say it feels "cheap" though.

mjanx123 6 hours ago||
It is fun to see the familiar Los Santos locations.
johanvts 2 hours ago|||
Would also be more fitting as most of it is made in Poland.
MarceliusK 5 hours ago|||
IKEA Poland missed an opportunity here
mejutoco 5 hours ago||
Tak
noir_lord 16 hours ago|||
> CROYDON sofa

I mean.. we have the Windsor Chair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_chair) and the Welsh Dresser (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_dresser) and those both slightly predate ikea so it's not a new thing.

dmboyd 10 hours ago|||
Ok porridge drawer is definitely someone having a laff
dickiedyce 6 hours ago||
Nope. Real Scots history. See also ‘piece’
Nursie 3 hours ago|||
Don't forget the Chesterfield!
hahahaa 14 hours ago|||
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Electron
pndy 16 hours ago|||
Ikea mobile application has little speaker near the product name that invokes pronunciation - sadly, that's not available on desktop site. I still tend to read Swedish accented letters in these names as German umlauts.

So that wouldn't be a problem if Polish names would be provided with audio examples.

By the way, the communistic period here was full of products using regular words, name of places or people’s names. We had Wisła, Bieszczady wall units. First Polish color TV was Jowisz (Jupiter); first TV ever my mother had was called Szafir (Saphire). Then Szarotka (elderweis) or Sylwia radios from 50s and 60s respectively. A clone of IBM PC with Intel 8086 (or with Russian clone) from 1986 was called Mazovia - Mazowsze which is a historical region of Poland, same name was also used for DOS encoding for that machine.

kzrdude 15 hours ago||
The German vowels are a good start, but Swedish pronunciation is of course a little bit vowel shifted from German.
ignoramous 16 hours ago||
You have a point but in Branding, it is accepted that bold (noisy) and distinctive (rather than only descriptive) names are an advantage: Creating billion-dollar brands: Vercel, Azure, Windsurf, Sonos, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adyIaTopO6g&t=610 (Jun 2025).
hahahaa 14 hours ago||
Every startup is named like these though so it is sorta biased.

E.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs

tverbeure 16 hours ago||
> Every possible product name is carefully checked to avoid undesirable meanings in other languages, political or religious affiliations and fit into our global profile.

I love the JERKER desk that I bought 26 years ago, so I assume this rule must be younger than that.

forgotmypasswor 15 hours ago||
I was at IKEA once when they first came to America and there was a chair that was called the "assengråbben" or something like that.

I heard a guy nearby telling the person with him "must be for the interns".

hammock 12 hours ago||
There is a lamp called Fartyg
Agentlien 6 hours ago|||
As a Swede, my first reaction was "what's wrong with calling it 'ship'?"

Took me several seconds to get it.

juancb 7 hours ago|||
Don't forget the children's workbench: FARTFULL
voxelghost 5 hours ago||
meaning speedy
rtkwe 16 hours ago|||
Perhaps even the source of that rule.
dhosek 16 hours ago||
Pax is another one that violates the rule that someone pointed out lower. Also Malm is a surname which is another violation of the rule (one of the characters in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was named, if I recall correctly, Stefan Malm). I remember reading the books with my then-wife and she said it was like reading an IKEA catalog. I thought she was referring to the character/place names, but it turned out that the second book had a long section where the titular girl furnishes an apartment from IKEA and—that chapter was exactly like reading an IKEA catalog.
jagaerglad 15 hours ago|||
Although "Malm" is a common surname, it's a word first and a name second if that makes sense

The same way "Brown" is common surname in English but mostly makes you think of the color first

BambooleanLogic 15 hours ago||||
When it comes to names like "MALM", it's likely incidental.

"Malm" is a a noun with several meanings, most notably "metal ore", but also some (more archaic) meanings like "area with sandy soil" or "city outskirts".

The fact that "Malm" also happens to be a surname is secondary; Swedish has a lot of surnames that are simply ordinary nouns or adjectives. A completely literal "No surnames, ever" rule would probably be quite a bit too restrictive. I suspect that the actual internal rule is "No names that are primarily (or solely) surnames", or something to that effect.

orthoxerox 3 hours ago||||
If I remember correctly, the second book was published posthumously, and my guess is the editor's hands were tied.
AndrewKemendo 14 hours ago|||
Malm was released in the 1980s: https://techvibeblog.com/what-is-ikea-malm-made-of/

Girl with the dragon tattoo was released in 2005

tazjin 12 hours ago|||
Currently 6833 people in Sweden have the last name "Malm", and some large fraction of them were born before 2005 (could not be bothered to check how many, sorry!).
thorbutt 9 hours ago|||
I believe you, but that site reeks of LLM generated SEO junk
AndrewKemendo 8 hours ago||
You’ve let your biases affect your analysis
brunoborges 16 hours ago|||
You know the saying... a "Do not step on the grass" sign only shows up after people start frequently stepping on the grass...
Isolus 13 hours ago|||
Yes, they also sold a toilet brush named "VIREN". In Germany this is the plural of virus. And some year ago Danes complained IKEA named carpets and runner after danish towns but never something "better".
andrewfromx 15 hours ago|||
Chevy "no va" https://www.thoughtco.com/chevy-nova-that-wouldnt-go-3078090
javcasas 15 hours ago|||
You also have the Mitsubishi Pajero. Feel free to find the derogatory term in the wiki.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Pajero

moogly 5 hours ago||
Similar trivia with a Swedish connection: the original name of the Honda Fit/Jazz was Honda Fitta, but then they found out it's the Swedish word for "cunt" so that was a no-go.
AdmiralAsshat 14 hours ago|||
Article is missing the urban legend about "Bite the wax tadpole"
glimshe 16 hours ago|||
An excellent desk, by the way. I still have mine (the old heavy duty model)!
SoleilAbsolu 15 hours ago||
I'm happy to say I'm in the circle of jer...Um...So do I, one of the best home purchases I've ever made!
kraquepype 14 hours ago|||
Holy crap that's my desk too, bought about 24 years ago. It's been a great desk. Gray frame with black work area/shelves.

I guess at the time the name was funny too but I had forgotten it.

tverbeure 8 hours ago||
I didn’t even know the name for the longest time. It’s only when I wanted to buy some extensions that I realized the cult status of that model, and that’s not (just) because of the name. It’s a truly great design and a shame that it was discontinued many years ago.
DonHopkins 16 hours ago||
[dead]
dools 8 hours ago|
> In other parts of the world, they are basically incomprehensible, but fun!

For some reason unknown to either of us it really pisses off my wife when I refer to our IKEA furniture by the Swedish names. I think it stems from a deep seated disdain she has for flat pack furniture.

Me: where’s the thing?

Wife: in the white cupboard

Me: which white cupboard? There are 6

Wife: the white cupboard opposite the piano

Me: the Brimnes?

Wife: >.<

mikepurvis 8 hours ago||
Exactly the right amount of chaos, particular given that the Brimnes "series" encompasses a pretty wide range of configurations and form factors:

https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/cat/brimnes-series-700496/

StingyJelly 1 hour ago|||
We are both calling our callax callax and hate it the equal amount. (The word as well as the piece of furniture)
MarceliusK 6 hours ago|||
This is exactly why the names work
ErroneousBosh 3 hours ago|||
Similar conversation I've had with my partner in the past few hours:

Me: it's beside the piano

Her: Which piano?

Me: The Ensoniq upstairs

orthoxerox 3 hours ago||
Are you the staring Brazilian piano player?
jdkskdkdkrkr 5 hours ago||
[flagged]
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