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How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

ikea.com

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Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#31

Post by Snild »

close04 wrote: post #4

> Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA, had a hard time remembering numbers and numbers And also numbers I assume. Does it mean something like “endless stream of numbers”? I’m very surprised that they have 2000-3000 new products every year. Checking every name against every language of countries they operate in to avoid “bad” names must be a pain.

The Swedish version of the page just says "siffror" (literally "digits", but colloquially "numbers") once.

I'm not aware of any relevant Swedish expression that would repeat the same word like that. Maybe something like "siffror och tal", where both words could be translated as "numbers" by someone not paying attention to the resulting sentence. :)

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#32

Post by DonHopkins »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #16
joshdavham wrote: post #9

> preferably contain the letters Å, Ä or Ö Yes, but why prefer these letters? I don’t know Swedish. Is it because these diacritics make the names seem more exotic?

röck döts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_umlaut A møøse once bit my sister...

I raise you an em-dash —̈ with an umlaut!

Suck on that, AI Slop Detector!

(Confession and question for dang: I actually used an LLM to generate that unicode composite to copy and paste —̈ is that against HN guidelines?)

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#34

Post by victorbjorklund »

fy20 wrote: post #13

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?

It is kind of funny sometimes. Sometimes it’s related to what the thing is (like a pun) and sometimes just random

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#35

Post by nine_k »

fy20 wrote: post #13

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?

If the goal is something that reads weird for most Europeans, then try picking names from Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, or Welsh.

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#37

Post by victorbjorklund »

close04 wrote: post #4

> Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA, had a hard time remembering numbers and numbers And also numbers I assume. Does it mean something like “endless stream of numbers”? I’m very surprised that they have 2000-3000 new products every year. Checking every name against every language of countries they operate in to avoid “bad” names must be a pain.

Seems like a mistake. No expression like that in Swedish at least.

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#39

Post by devmor »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #28
red75prime wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A subdivision of people who know every obscenity in the world would be chuckleworthy, but I guess they use a validation program.

Well, that institutional knowledge has been accumulated, held, and passed down through generations of DMV workers in the USA.

And yet some still get through!

I’ve seen “LILCHYT” and “MYSHART” on the road recently.

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