If you ever find yourself in southern Sweden (or Copenhagen and fancy a train ride across a cool bridge) the IKEA museum at Älmhult is well worth a visit: https://ikeamuseum.com/en/
How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
81–90 of 342 posts
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#82My Swedish friend told me they make the more expensive things to sound more Swedish and the cheaper stuff to sound Norwegian. Any speakers of either language able to confirm or deny?
This article from 2018 claims the same (and that Danish sounding names are rugs and floormats): https://www.worldnomads.com/in-the-news/the-hidden-message-i...
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#83> 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.
Chevy "no va" https://www.thoughtco.com/chevy-nova-that-wouldnt-go-3078090
You also have the Mitsubishi Pajero. Feel free to find the derogatory term in the wiki.
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps even the source of that rule.
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…
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
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#85Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#86The product names have made me chuckle quite a few times in the past. Such an easy way to make your products more likeable.
Also, maybe semi-relevant: I made a small guessing game about the IKEA product catalogue in case someone wants to be lightly entertainment for two minutes [1].
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps even the source of that rule.
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…
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.
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#88> 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.
An excellent desk, by the way. I still have mine (the old heavy duty model)!
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!
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#89> 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.
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".
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#90For 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?
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.…
The German vowels are a good start, but Swedish pronunciation is of course a little bit vowel shifted from German.