The IKEA Naming System

Ex-Talking Head David Byrne blogged last month about his maiden voyage to IKEA:

Why does everything have weird names? Every container, shelf, cabinet or appliance had some odd name, as if people from Planet Sweden anthropomorphized these objects, naming each one they encountered as best they could:

BESTA
HEDDA
BJARNUM
LERBERG
INREDA
EKTORP
GRUNDTON
BERTA
KARNA

It turns out, Byrne writes, that the Wikipedians had already cracked the code:

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 [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

I love discovering a nomenclature's inner structure; it's so satisfying to know that someone has taken the time and care to think creatively about the work that names do.

Still, the IKEA taxonomy is no less enigmatic for having been described. I'm sure there are several PhD theses waiting to be written about it. Music, chemistry, and nautical terms for lighting? Feminine names for curtains, masculine names for chairs and desks? And what subtle intra-Scandinavian tensions or harmonies are revealed by the assignment of Danish, Norwegian, and Finnish words to certain categories but not others? Is there some national stereotype about the Finns (for example) setting an especially attractive table? Or, more perversely, not?

The Wikipedia article continues:

Because IKEA is a world-wide company working in several countries with several different languages, sometimes the Nordic naming leads to problems where the word means something completely different to the product. A well known example was the bed frame GUTVIK. As the word can be pronounced Gootfick it invites German-speaking people to understand it like gut fick which is somewhat close to "good fuck" in German.

Then there's this tidbit:

Company founder Ingvar Kamprad, who is dyslexic, found that naming the furniture with proper names and words, rather than a product code, made the names easier to remember.

Take heed, O ye makers of automobiles and techno gizmos!

The name IKEA, by the way, is an acronym. IK stands for Ingvar Kamprad; the E stands for Elmtaryd, the farm where Kamprad grew up, and the A is for Agunnaryd, Kamprad's home village.

(Hat tip to Andy Sernowitz.)

Comments

[mike]

You might enjoy Raymond Chen's experiments with IKEA naming:

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/01/29/64390.aspx

[Jessica]

And there I was thinking the names just came from the lyrics of the collective works of ABBA in their native tongue! But seriously, if you knew how cool I thought the revelation of the method to the IKEA naming madness was, you'd think I was pathetic. You'd be right!

[Xtopher]

I joke with my wife that after we've been to Ikea the only thing I ever come home with is the Throbbin Noggen.

[Akrin]

My mothers name is the name of table runners at Ikea. She is Danish, so it makes sense, she was pretty excited to find them too.

[Daniel Reeders]

IKEA Australia recently renamed their "Jerker" series of desks to "Fredrik". Can't imagine why...

[Alexander Radsby]

This can actually be true. Well almost all the names from the ikea furniture are swedish words in some way. (I'm swedish btw). I love it like that actually, much better than "MX-548".

[James King]

I can't believe people waste their time thinking about this shit.

[Tats]

The thing about Gutvik was that it was the name of a bunk bed for children... Caused quite a scandal in Germany.

[Gunnar Andreassen]

This was actually interesting, I will post a link to this info. Thanks.

[Denial]

On a related topic (related to the Gutvik incident) - onother swedish company - H&M -got into a similar situation with a pair of girls' jeans. They were called Fit Slick - which in swedish means c*nt lick...

[DomD]

Another example here in Germany is the name "Viren" for bathroom accessories. Exactly the same word is used for the plural of "Virus".

[Passionista]

My favourite is the Fartfull:

http://tinyurl.com/2rjqvq

[dtsomp]

...and furthermore, the swedish pronunciation of IKEA (ee-kee-ah, more or less) is the same with the ancient greek word for "house" (Οικία).

[Dr. W]

"And what subtle intra-Scandinavian tensions or harmonies are revealed by the assignment of Danish, Norwegian, and Finnish words to certain categories but not others?"

It is truly an art to be able to write such bollocks as flamboyantly and eloquently as you do, especially about something only anglophones on the West side of the Atlantic worry about.

The names are written in Danish and Norwegian as well as Swedish because Ikea had its first shops in those three countries. Scandinavia has no true geopolitical borders and the people are free to move from country-to-country living and working as they see fit. Unlike the US with its neighbours, the Scandinavians value this relationship as they value their often intertwining histories. Their collective modern-day progressionism (which I've labelled progressive values, politics and mentality for lack of a better term) is also important to them, as they consistently top every "World's Best X" list that gets published. There is no bloody stereotype about the way any one of the Nordic peoples sets their damn table.

Regards,
Dr. W

[Alastair]

It's interesting to find the pattern, but cmon, PhDs? You gotta be kidding.

[xen ix]

Interesting to see how those who don't speak Swedish is interested in the naming system Ikea uses. I find it amusing myself as it differs from other companies that gives their products boring names.

Still. I would advice you to do more research.

You claim this: Bookcase ranges: Occupations

That is wrong, but sure, I will gladly be corrected if I'm wrong, but when was 'Billy' an occupation?

[Alex Toronto On Canada]

I actually thought that IKEA really meant "common sense" in Swedish. I don't listen/watch commercials any more.

I loved Daniel Reeders comment.

[Spanky]

I bought the Billy shelves.

What kind of occupation is a "billy".

dictionary.com yielded nothing but goats and clubs...

[A]

"Billy" nothing but a male name, just like "Gorm".

[David Lyness]

I work for IKEA in Northern Ireland, I thought this information was already quite widely known. Although it's interesting to note that 'Pax' is a Norwegian place name, since at least 40% of all the orders we receive in our department are for Pax wardrobe frames.

[Michael]

Now if only you could uncover the IKEA instruction manual system we'd all be set

[there is no pax]

There is no Pax in Norway. I´m Norwegian and even did a mapsearch for it to be 100% shure. ;)

[brasso]

Pax (or paxa) is a Swedish expression for "call dibs". That could be the meaning since everyone seems to want that one.

[Nina]

So how does "Ivar" fit into this theory? It's got to be the most popular storage system/book shelves ever sold. it was a best seller 30 years ago, and still is. Ivar is a Norwegian mans name...

[Pinksy]

Now if they can figure out how Autechre name their tunes...