> Every possible product name is carefully checked to avoid undesirable meanings in other languages, political or religious affiliations and fit into our global profile.<p>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.<p>I heard a guy nearby telling the person with him "must be for the interns".
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 <i>The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo</i> 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 the second book had a long section where the titular girl furnishes an apartment from IKEA and—that chapter was <i>exactly</i> like reading an IKEA catalog.
Although "Malm" is a common surname, it's a word first and a name second if that makes sense<p>The same way "Brown" is common surname in English but mostly makes you think of the color first
When it comes to names like "MALM", it's likely incidental.<p>"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".<p>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.
Malm was released in the 1980s:
<a href="https://techvibeblog.com/what-is-ikea-malm-made-of/" rel="nofollow">https://techvibeblog.com/what-is-ikea-malm-made-of/</a><p>Girl with the dragon tattoo was released in 2005
Yes, they also sold a toilet brush named "VIREN". In Germany this is the plural of virus.
And some year ago Danes complained IKEA named carpets and runner after danish towns but never something "better".
An excellent desk, by the way. I still have mine (the old heavy duty model)!
You know the saying... a "Do not step on the grass" sign only shows up after people start frequently stepping on the grass...
Chevy "no va" <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/chevy-nova-that-wouldnt-go-3078090" rel="nofollow">https://www.thoughtco.com/chevy-nova-that-wouldnt-go-3078090</a>
You also have the Mitsubishi Pajero. Feel free to find the derogatory term in the wiki.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Pajero" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Pajero</a>
Article is missing the urban legend about "Bite the wax tadpole"
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.<p>I guess at the time the name was funny too but I had forgotten it.
[dead]
Amazing. A post asks a question in the title that I actually want answered, and then goes on to answer that question clearly and succinctly. Maybe the best corporate content I've seen this year.
But how can I find the answer to the question without reading punchy headers followed by paragraphs like<p>> How We Leverage Naming<p>> Our Naming Strategy, Explained<p>> Why Swedish Is Important<p>> The Bottom Line<p>And unforgettable aphorisms like<p>> It isn't just a name—it is the output of a scalable, globally coordinated, linguistically validated, Swedish-inspired naming framework designed to optimize brand consistency<p>to let me know? I'm completely lost on this page and can't find the answer without these.
May I introduce you to the UK chain Iceland and their stance on management consultants?<p><a href="https://about.iceland.co.uk/our-story/the-dark-ages/beware-management-consultants/" rel="nofollow">https://about.iceland.co.uk/our-story/the-dark-ages/beware-m...</a>
The entire section of the website about 'The Dark Ages' is priceless. They don't pull any punches: <a href="https://about.iceland.co.uk/our-story/the-dark-ages/" rel="nofollow">https://about.iceland.co.uk/our-story/the-dark-ages/</a>
Just brilliant!
This is fckn brilliant!!<p>I’m bookmarking it for sharing
Brilliant.<p>Submit it to Hacker News as its own post before I do.<p>Seriously.<p>You have one hour.
I agree, and it's kind of sad that getting simple, clear communication is exceptional.
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.<p>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.
You really wanna get weird, there's those continents of Asia, Africa, and South America, full of different sounds to use for names. Ikea is Swedish, so they get to propagate Swedish culture to the rest of the world.
My missus is Hungarian, I'm sure it's a lovely language but it just sounds like Klingon to me.<p>Which makes it hilarious when she's annoyed at the boy.
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.)
Now I want a HÉTFŐ desk, and a SZÉKESFEHÉRVÁR... something.
> BYDGOSZCZ sofa<p>This may not even be that far off from reality, looking at the sort of names rando brands on Amazon often have...
Just go to Polish IKEA and buy the Grzegorz table and Brzęczyszczykiewicz chairs …
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Electron" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Electron</a>
its not all that strange tbh - im learning danish which is adjacent enough to swedish that I can understand most of the names - sometimes they aren't relevant to the product function, sometimes they are, but they're just names. Is it strange to you that the word "photoshop" uses english language? what about a Hamburger being named after a place?
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 again has an etymology, as it refers to the initial purpose of that program, reworking pictures.
On the opposite, if things are just named 'for the lulz', and my desk is called Boston, my text editor 'golden retriever' and my lamp acorn, confusion may at some point arise.
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.
How about eating a Sandwich with Turkey, Bologna and Cheddar, maybe with a Paris-Brest for dessert?
It is kind of funny sometimes. Sometimes it’s related to what the thing is (like a pun) and sometimes just random
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.<p>So that wouldn't be a problem if Polish names would be provided with audio examples.<p>By the way, the communistic period here was full of products using regular words, name of places or people’s names. We had Wisła, Bieszczady wall units. First Polish color TV was Jowisz (Jupiter); first TV ever my mother had was called Szafir (Saphire). Then Szarotka (elderweis) or Sylwia radios from 50s and 60s respectively. A clone of IBM PC with Intel 8086 (or with Russian clone) from 1986 was called Mazovia - Mazowsze which is a historical region of Poland, same name was also used for DOS encoding for that machine.
> CROYDON sofa<p>I mean.. we have the Windsor Chair (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_chair" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_chair</a>) and the Welsh Dresser (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_dresser" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_dresser</a>) and those both <i>slightly</i> predate ikea so it's not a new thing.
You have a point but in Branding, it is accepted that <i>bold</i> (noisy) and <i>distinctive</i> (rather than only descriptive) names are an advantage: <i>Creating billion-dollar brands: Vercel, Azure, Windsurf, Sonos</i>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adyIaTopO6g&t=610" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adyIaTopO6g&t=610</a> (Jun 2025).
This comic used to be viral in Russia in the 2010s: <a href="https://m.vk.ru/wall-28208003_16956" rel="nofollow">https://m.vk.ru/wall-28208003_16956</a>.<p>(The dialogue goes, "Somewhere deep inside Ikea HQ: How shall we name the lamp?" "GNVÖERK.")
> Did you know that we name around 2,000-3,000 new products every year?<p>It's more likely that the whole product catalog contains 2-3k products. [1][2][3]
So no, you don't.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/products-products" rel="nofollow">https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/products-products</a>
[2] <a href="https://lar5.com/ikea" rel="nofollow">https://lar5.com/ikea</a> (~ 2200)
[3] <a href="https://namingschemes.com/Ikea_Product_Names" rel="nofollow">https://namingschemes.com/Ikea_Product_Names</a> (~ 1300)
When [3] contains half as many as [2] it should be reason to doubt the values of both. <a href="https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/ranjithpanicker/ikea-global-product-catalog-and-price-2026" rel="nofollow">https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/ranjithpanicker/ikea-global-...</a> claims "34,932 unique global products".
The door mats are mostly named after places in Denmark, as they should be.
The toilet seat is named after the strait between Denmark and Sweden. <a href="https://youtu.be/ajBN0Xypi0I" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/ajBN0Xypi0I</a>
The door mats should be named after doors, and the place mats named after places.
My favorite is `fejka` for the artificial plant/flower.<p>I think "being as widely-understandable pun as possible" is definitely one of their naming priorities.
The $50USD Bluetooth speakers "NATTBAD" gave us a good chuckle.<p><a href="https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/nattbad-bluetooth-speaker-yellow-70601611/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/nattbad-bluetooth-speaker-yello...</a>
About 25 years ago, one rule was that everything related to the toilets was in Danish. He said it was the Swedish Danish rivalry.
> Did you know that we name around 2,000-3,000 new products every year?<p>I find this surprisingly high; I guess it’s _products_ and not _names_, meaning that five colors of the same product count as five new products but only one name.
> contain between 4 and 12 letters<p>PAX<p><a href="https://www.ikea.com/de/en/cat/pax-system-19086/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ikea.com/de/en/cat/pax-system-19086/</a>
The product names have made me chuckle quite a few times in the past. Such an easy way to make your products more likeable.<p>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].<p>[1] <a href="https://deriese.net/ikeaguesser.html?s=hn" rel="nofollow">https://deriese.net/ikeaguesser.html?s=hn</a>
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.
One of my go-to dad jokes is to see Ikea furniture at someone's house and ask "Is that a möstliglü [table|cabinet|etc]?"
This 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!<p>Was very surprised to find things like “bookshelves are all men’s names”, “all names must have ä, å, or ö”, etc.<p>Complete coincidence that this is #2 today. Had to check that ’NaOH’ wasn’t one of my coworkers
The Fräck mirror was named after the commonly used faux swear word on Battlestar Galactica, where one of the characters used a similar mirror:<p><a href="https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/fraeck-mirror-stainless-steel-38006200/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/fraeck-mirror-stainless-steel-3...</a>
And then, unbeknownst to what the Sci-Fi future might bring, an Italian home appliance manufacturer names themselves SMEG.
You may say that "<i>There's too much confusion</i>", ha!
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: <a href="https://ikeamuseum.com/en/" rel="nofollow">https://ikeamuseum.com/en/</a>
I was there three days ago, can comfirm. And if you want to stay overnight, you _of course_ sleep in the neighbouring IKEA Hotel! And if you check-in to the hotel first, you‘ll get a voucher for free entrance to the museum. Did I mention that an absolutely excellent breakfast is included in the very reasonable room rate?
And in case you visit the museum in the near future, they currently have a special (temporary) exhibition about IKEA's founder, Ingvar Kamprad, who was a very creative but also exceptionally socially and environmentally responsible entrepreneur. Nice contrast to today's appalling tech billionaires.
Ever since I heard this song, it now always plays in my head whenever IKEA comes up - have a listen while reading:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4si8w8WMFc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4si8w8WMFc</a><p>(Rob Paravonian - Particle Board) - of Dr. Demento, etc., fame.
> preferably contain the letters Å, Ä or Ö<p>I always thought it's just a natural consequence of using Swedish language, turns out it's on purpose!
Swedish does naturally use a lot of letters with umlauts (e.g. a common plural suffix -är), so a noun with a special letter is usually not hard to come by, and looks more Swedish (than, say, Dutch or English, which are sort of cousin languages).
> preferably contain the letters Å, Ä or Ö<p>Yes, but why prefer these letters?<p>I don’t know Swedish. Is it because these diacritics make the names seem more exotic?
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.<p>By the way, we consider them unique letters, not A and O with diacritics. The Swedish alphabet goes …XYZÅÄÖ.<p>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, which is why many swedes will mix them up when speaking English. Mostly in the W->V direction, but I've heard the opposite happen too.
> The Swedish alphabet goes …XYZÅÄÖ.<p>IKEA sold that too: <a href="https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/306072403869" rel="nofollow">https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/306072403869</a>
Huh, interesting that they are collated at the end. These differences also makes sorting language dependent.<p>In Hungarian it's A, Á, B, C, Cs, D, Dz, Dzs, E, É, F... So Cu--- comes before Cs---
Just to make things worse, the Scandinavian languages use different versions of what have historically been the same letters, and collate them differently. E.g. Norwegian has æ (Ä), ø (Ö), å, collated in that order. Technically the Swedish variants are not part of the Norwegian alphabet, but they're typically collated with their modern Norwegian equivalents.<p>At least in Norwegian, ae, oe, and aa is also traditionally collated as if they were using these letters, so a word starting "aa" comes at the end of the alphabet, after z, oe and ae....
Even worse, in Czech it’s<p>A B C Č D Ď E F G H Ch I J…<p>• „če“ goes after both „ca“ and „ci“, but „ác“ goes between „ab“ and „ad“<p>• „cha“ goes after „da“ and „ha“
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.
Häagen-Dazs is American, but was apparently meant to sound Danish. To a Scandinavian it absolutely doesn't.
Scandinavia and the Nordics are quite fancy and refined for Americans. Lagom, hygge, fika, the minimalism, the enlightened equality and solidarity, good education, little crime, highest happiness ratings, even prisons are like hotels, etc makes it a kind of imagined lifestyle that's cozy and thoughtful and so on.
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.
Thanks to French, who came up with the current writing system.
See also: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_branding" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_branding</a> (especially the Foreign Orthography section)
I guess it helps with emphasizing their Swedish identity, which is one of their goals with naming. Doesn't gel too well with "feels good to say" for a non-native speaker, but I see their point.
Most likely. In the early 90s there was a knock-off of Ikea called Stør which used the ø for exoticism. I had assumed that it was a Danish company, but apparently, not: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STØR" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STØR</a> (The store where I bought some of my first furniture from—off the 60 in City of Industry—was quite possibly the original location).
> I don’t know Swedish. Is it because these diacritics make the names seem more exotic?<p>of course. Haagen Dazs, Motorhead, etc have known it loooong ago
Yës
Why not rename to IKEÅ ?
Because it would then be pronounced IKE-Oh.<p>Also, the A is short for Agunnaryd, the founder's hometown. (IK is his initials, Ingvar Kamprad, and E is for Elmtaryd, his family farm.)
You mean öf cårse?
röck döts <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_umlaut" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_umlaut</a><p>A møøse once bit my sister...
My Swedish friend told me they make the more expensive things to sound more Swedish and the cheaper stuff to sound Norwegian.<p>Any speakers of either language able to confirm or deny?
Bedroom and living room furniture is named after Norwegian places
As someone named after an IKEA chair, I can testify I took no offense while assembling myself. <a href="https://manuall.co.uk/ikea-bertil-chair/" rel="nofollow">https://manuall.co.uk/ikea-bertil-chair/</a>
Nice,
How to use that strategy for software? But first It makes sense?
I had assumed it involved a dartboard.
I love how the chose Verde, which means value, for their long time retired kitchen furniture. They were so good that they still sell above their original retail prices now.
> Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA, had a hard time remembering numbers and numbers<p>And also numbers I assume. Does it mean something like “endless stream of numbers”?<p>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.<p>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. :)
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.
Seems like a mistake. No expression like that in Swedish at least.
<a href="https://zagge.ru/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/13333008.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://zagge.ru/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/13333008.jpg</a><p>Translation:<p><pre><code> Somewhere inside IKEA.
- How do we call the table lamp?
- GNVOERK</code></pre>
> Every possible product name is carefully checked to avoid undesirable meanings in other languages, political or religious affiliations and fit into our global profile.<p>Hey Donna [1]...<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T2oje4cYxw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T2oje4cYxw</a>
I figured they just let a Dala horse walk around on top of a bunch of keyboards and whatever string comes out is the new name?
I always just thought Swedish had a lot of words for "crap".<p>Ikea used to make somewhat reasonable and affordable products, that, in total were much higher quality than their price point suggested.<p>Now they are just cheap, on almost every metric.
The thing is that recent products are crappy. I got so many decades old secondhand things. They looked like regular old furniture and it was fine. Then I continued buying same things, but new. While the old furniture didn’t change at all the new pieces became yellow/brown after couple tears. We don’t smoke!!! It was a nightmare and I don’t buy IKEA products anymore.
> Bookshelves → men's names<p>That's sexist. Saying women don't read books? /s
Maybe