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.
How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
91–100 of 342 posts
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#92This is so random. I had just pulled this exact page up this morning to settle a debate with coworkers over whether the product names were real Swedish words or not. I thought they were all made up! Was very surprised to find things like “bookshelves are all men’s names”, “all names must have ä, å, or ö”, etc. Complete coincidence that this is #2 today. Had to check that ’NaOH’ wasn’t one of my coworkers
A lot of them are Scandi place names, too.
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#93> contain between 4 and 12 letters PAX https://www.ikea.com/de/en/cat/pax-system-19086/
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.
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those are the letters we have that are distinct from English. Not exotic to us, but yeah, "weird letters" is probably considered part of the international brand now. By the way, we consider them unique letters, not A and O with diacritics. The Swedish alphabet goes …XYZÅÄÖ. Oh, and I just learned that we only officially added W in 2006. Before that, it was considered a variant of V. We still pronounce them the same,…
Huh, interesting that they are collated at the end. These differences also makes sorting language dependent. In Hungarian it's A, Á, B, C, Cs, D, Dz, Dzs, E, É, F... So Cu--- comes before Cs---
Even worse, in Czech it’s
A B C Č D Ď E F G H Ch I J…
• „če“ goes after both „ca“ and „ci“, but „ác“ goes between „ab“ and „ad“
• „cha“ goes after „da“ and „ha“
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#95For 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.
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.)
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure why, but when I see certain diacritics with latin alphabet, my brain tries to place the language somewhere in Europe. I don't know if I can call that an exotic feeling but it certainly feels foreign.
Could also be Vietnamese, they are big on diacritics.
Vietnamese can easily be recognized because most words are one syllable and the vowel may even have two diacritics stacked on top.
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#97Bedroom and living room furniture is named after Norwegian places
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#98For 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?
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#99For 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?
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).
Every startup is named like these though so it is sorta biased.
Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
#100> 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.
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.