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…
How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
231–240 of 342 posts
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".
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#233Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just go to Polish IKEA and buy the Grzegorz table and Brzęczyszczykiewicz chairs …
> Brzęczyszczykiewicz MAUL HALTEN!
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#235The 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.
The rubber ducky (yes, they sell one) could be called Bob.
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#236It 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.
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#237Earlier 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.
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?
#238Earlier 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. >…
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#239Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#240The door mats are mostly named after places in Denmark, as they should be.