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How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

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

#231

As a Swede in London, it's annoying that IKEA staff don't understand you when you pronounce the names correctly. You have to change letters (e.g. å is not a with an accent. It's a different letter) and read it like you don't know the language.

I'd suggest you look at it as funny and not annoying: IKEA in London, being a very multicultural place, likely has many non-native English speakers as well! When all else fails, you can always go back to the basic international language of gesturing, pointing and acting out the use of something to get to your point. (Or more boringly, point at the name on your phone) You could also try adapting pronounciation to what…

As a related anecdote, I found it surprising when I moved to Switzerland decades ago, that speaking high German wouldn't really work with foreign-looking shop assistants - they'd only speak and even understand Swiss German.

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

#232

> 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.

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".

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?

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

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just go to Polish IKEA and buy the Grzegorz table and Brzęczyszczykiewicz chairs …

> Brzęczyszczykiewicz MAUL HALTEN!

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

https://youtu.be/AfKZclMWS1U

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

#235
post #20

The door mats are mostly named after places in Denmark, as they should be.

The door mats should be named after doors, and the place mats named after places.

Maybe the door mats should be called Matthew, Matityahu, Matti, Mattes, Matthias.

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

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

#236

It is funny how those name often sound differently than intended in other languages while still remaining memetic. My best example is "Knorrig" as it sounds like a fun name for a pig since "knur" is a male ping in Polish.

That fits, because "knorr" is Swedish for a pig's tail!

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

#237
post #58
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

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

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suggest you look at it as funny and not annoying: IKEA in London, being a very multicultural place, likely has many non-native English speakers as well! When all else fails, you can always go back to the basic international language of gesturing, pointing and acting out the use of something to get to your point. (Or more boringly, point at the name on your phone) You could also try adapting pronounciation to what…

> you can always go back to the basic international language of gesturing, Doesn't really work for the kind of products they sell. E.g. going to the spare parts place and asking for a replacement part for Mörbylånga or Nackanäs. And I don't know the international gesture for a table. Besides, they have many tables. I don't think saying "Bläddra", and signing that you're flipping through a book, helps at all either. >…

I think Netherlands is a bad example, because all locals I've met there speak perfect English, and a visitor learns that fast!
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