The IKEA Product Naming System

IKEAEver wondered about where IKEA gets their product names from? What they mean? What language they’re in?

Well most of the names are usually either Swedish, Danish, Finnish or Norwegian in origin, and there’s a whole naming system that they’re using for their product ranges, and it goes as follows:

Upholstered furniture, coffee tables, rattan furniture, bookshelves, media storage, doorknobs: Swedish place names

Beds, wardrobes, hall furniture: Norwegian place names

Dining tables and chairs: Finnish place names

Bookcase ranges: Occupations

Bathroom articles: Scandinavian lakes, rivers and bays

Kitchens: grammatical terms, sometimes also other names

Chairs, desks: men’s names

Materials, curtains: women’s names

Garden furniture: Swedish islands

Carpets: Danish place names

Lighting: terms from music, chemistry, meteorology, measures, weights, seasons, months, days, boats, nautical terms

Bedlinen, bed covers, pillows/cushions: flowers, plants, precious stones; words related to sleep, comfort, and cuddling

Children’s items: mammals, birds, adjectives

Curtain accessories: mathematical and geometrical terms

Kitchen utensils: foreign words, spices, herbs, fish, mushrooms, fruits or berries, functional descriptions

Boxes, wall decoration, pictures and frames, clocks: colloquial expressions, also Swedish place names

[Source: Wikipedia]

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Mohamed Marwen Meddah

Mohamed Marwen Meddah is a Tunisian-Canadian, web aficionado, software engineering leader, blogger, and amateur photographer.

3 thoughts on “The IKEA Product Naming System”

  1. So IKEA is a bunch of stereotypical assholes? Curtains and materials are women’s names and the desks and chairs are men’s names.
    Funny.

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