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IKEA Naming Conventions
We’ve covered IKEA hacking before, but something just came to my attention: the product names at IKEA actually have a plan behind them. (I had always just assumed they were random Swedish words.) For example, all the bookcases are words (in Swedish, Danish, Finnish, or Norwegian) for occupations. Check out the full list from Wikipedia’s IKEA page:
- Upholstered furniture, coffee tables, rattan furniture, bookshelves, media storage, doorknobs: Swedish placenames (for example: Klippan)
- 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 placenames
For example, DUKTIG (meaning: good, well-behaved) is a line of children’s toys, OSLO is a name of a bed, JERKER (a Swedish masculine name) is a popular desk, DINERA (meaning: dine) for tableware, KASSETT (meaning: cassette) for media storage. One range of office furniture is named EFFEKTIV (meaning: effective), SKÄRPT (meaning: sharp or clever) is a line of kitchen knives.
So what does my Billy bookcase mean?
posted by Beth on 12-11-2007 at 9:34 am
Beth:
You don’t know about professional Billies?
posted by Sarah on 12-11-2007 at 9:44 am
“Billy” is a masculine name, not neccecarily swedish though. Extremely uncommon I would say.
One could speculate that they chose that name for its similarity to the swedish word for “cheap” (Billig, often with a muted “g”), pronounciation-wise.
posted by Elias on 12-11-2007 at 10:05 am
Beth- I was thinking the same exact thing!!! What the heck is a Billy?
posted by Lebetho on 12-11-2007 at 10:05 am
“Billy” is a masculine name, not neccecarily swedish though. Extremely uncommon in sweden I would say.
One could speculate that they chose that name for its similarity to the swedish word for “cheap” (Billig, often with a muted “g”), pronounciation-wise.
/swede
posted by Elias on 12-11-2007 at 10:07 am
Sarah…do I really want to know what a professional Billy is???
posted by Beth on 12-11-2007 at 10:19 am
I always assumed all the words were synonyms that meant either “cheap”, “fiberboard”, or “disposable”. Seriously, I’m not sure what sort of Kool-aid people are drinking to like this stuff. All marketing “cool factor”, no quality.
posted by Sid Morrison on 12-11-2007 at 11:32 am
So I’ve been scouring the web trying to figure out what ‘Billy’ means in the languages mentioned above — and I can’t find anything. Perhaps the Wikipedia article is wrong about this being an occupation?
posted by Higgins on 12-11-2007 at 11:56 am
I’m pretty sure “Billy” is a male prostitute.
posted by Erin on 12-11-2007 at 12:01 pm
This is really interesting. I once saw an IKEA children’s chair with my Finnish last name. For some reason I thought IKEA products were named after real people, perhaps executives at IKEA or the designers of the furniture. I thought I must have a distant relative who works for IKEA and got his or her name on the chair.
This makes sense though with children’s items named after “animals and adjectives.” I’ve been told by native speakers of Finnish that my last name means “horse field” or something roughly equivalent.
posted by just_say_no_to_lutefisk on 12-11-2007 at 2:59 pm
This makes me remember a conversation I once overheard:
“See, there’s method to my madness!”
“But it’s still madness.”
posted by John on 12-11-2007 at 5:50 pm
This is interesting. Once, in a silly mood, my boyfriend and I decided to name the part of the ear that sticks out in front of the ear-hole, the hard cartilege part. We decided to name it a Bjorgin Snudge (pronounced bee-or-gin). I said it sounded like something you could buy at IKEA, so we decided to find out if it really was something you could buy at IKEA. True story, we called the local IKEA store and told them we once saw something called a Bjorgin in their store but weren’t sure what it was. We were giggling, thinking they’d know it was a prank. Then the guy goes, “Oh yes, here we have a Bjorgen, for the kitchen, is that it?”. We were amazed- it was some kind of kitchen table + chairs set. Only $49.99! Never did find out what the ear part was actually called though.
posted by Molly W. on 12-11-2007 at 11:21 pm
Right now I’m remembering how Rose on Golden Girls would mention Scandinavian words.(fake, joke words)
My last name, in the old country, means “guy who sells hemp (for making rope)”. I’d like to see them give some item that name.
posted by Tdave on 12-12-2007 at 3:55 am
i believe that part of the ear is called the trachus (at least i know that is what i always heard it called in reference to having that area pierced)
posted by James on 12-12-2007 at 10:38 am
I work for IKEA and I love that you posted thi! It’s all true, infact there are two little old swedish ladies who name everything and there is a method to it all. I just wish they would think about what the names could mean in other languages. We used to have a kids bench named “FARTFULL”. I don’t know how many jokes we heard about that one!
posted by Sandy on 12-12-2007 at 1:17 pm
I completely disagree with Mr. Sid up there at #7…IKEA is a temple and I worship there a frequently as I can. I take about 3 trips a year to the one near Chicago. Looking forward to news of one being built closer than 2 hours away! My life would be complete. And to counter Mr. Sid’s comment,the wide assortment of items makes it impossible to dismiss the whole place as “cheap” or “disposable”. From bedding, to kitchen and bath and shelving and lighting…etc etc. LOVE IT.
posted by Joanna on 1-12-2008 at 10:18 am