How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
ikea.com143 points by NaOH 3 hours ago
143 points by NaOH 3 hours ago
> 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".
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 the second book had a long section where the titular girl furnishes an apartment from IKEA and—that chapter was exactly like reading an IKEA catalog.
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
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.
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!
You also have the Mitsubishi Pajero. Feel free to find the derogatory term in the wiki.
You know the saying... a "Do not step on the grass" sign only shows up after people start frequently stepping on the grass...
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
> How We Leverage Naming
> Our Naming Strategy, Explained
> Why Swedish Is Important
> The Bottom Line
And unforgettable aphorisms like
> 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
to let me know? I'm completely lost on this page and can't find the answer without these.
How am I supposed to know what matters if they don't tell me, in an honest fashion?
May I introduce you to the UK chain Iceland and their stance on management consultants?
https://about.iceland.co.uk/our-story/the-dark-ages/beware-m...
The entire section of the website about 'The Dark Ages' is priceless. They don't pull any punches: https://about.iceland.co.uk/our-story/the-dark-ages/
Brilliant.
Submit it to Hacker News as its own post before I do.
Seriously.
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.
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.)
My missus is Hungarian, I'm sure it's a lovely language but it just sounds like Klingon to me.
Which makes it hilarious when she's annoyed at the boy.
The fact that Sz in Hungarian reads as s and other way around, S becomes sh - is mind-boggling especially for Poles, where Sz is pronounced as sh. and S remains s.
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. 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.
The German vowels are a good start, but Swedish pronunciation is of course a little bit vowel shifted from German.
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
> CROYDON sofa
I mean.. we have the Windsor Chair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_chair) and the Welsh Dresser (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_dresser) and those both slightly predate ikea so it's not a new thing.
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).
> Did you know that we name around 2,000-3,000 new products every year?
It's more likely that the whole product catalog contains 2-3k products. [1][2][3] So no, you don't.
[1] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/products-products [2] https://lar5.com/ikea (~ 2200) [3] https://namingschemes.com/Ikea_Product_Names (~ 1300)
My favorite is `fejka` for the artificial plant/flower.
I think "being as widely-understandable pun as possible" is definitely one of their naming priorities.
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.
Bedroom and living room furniture is named after Norwegian places
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. https://youtu.be/ajBN0Xypi0I
The door mats should be named after doors, and the place mats named after places.
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?
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.
The 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].
The $50USD Bluetooth speakers "NATTBAD" gave us a good chuckle.
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/nattbad-bluetooth-speaker-yello...
The Fräck mirror was named after the commonly used faux swear word on Battlestar Galactica, where one of the characters used a similar mirror:
https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/fraeck-mirror-stainless-steel-3...
And then, unbeknownst to what the Sci-Fi future might bring, an Italian home appliance manufacturer names themselves SMEG.
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!
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
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.
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/
Ever since I heard this song, it now always plays in my head whenever IKEA comes up - have a listen while reading:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4si8w8WMFc
(Rob Paravonian - Particle Board) - of Dr. Demento, etc., fame.
My 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...
> preferably contain the letters Å, Ä or Ö
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
Yes, but why prefer these letters?
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.
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, 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.
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“
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.
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.
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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STØR (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?
of course. Haagen Dazs, Motorhead, etc have known it loooong ago
röck döts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_umlaut
A møøse once bit my sister...
I raise you an em-dash —̈ with an umlaut!
Suck on that, AI Slop Detector!
(Confession and question for dang: I actually used an LLM to generate that unicode composite to copy and paste —̈ is that against HN guidelines?)
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.
https://zagge.ru/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/13333008.jpg
Translation:
Somewhere inside IKEA.
- How do we call the table lamp?
- GNVOERK> Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA, had a hard time remembering numbers and numbers
And also numbers I assume. Does it mean something like “endless stream of numbers”?
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.
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.
And yet some still get through!
I’ve seen “LILCHYT” and “MYSHART” on the road recently.
> Every possible product name is carefully checked to avoid undesirable meanings in other languages, political or religious affiliations and fit into our global profile.
Hey Donna [1]...
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".
Ikea used to make somewhat reasonable and affordable products, that, in total were much higher quality than their price point suggested.
Now they are just cheap, on almost every metric.
Maybe