Ever 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]
Interesting! The Swedish are great designers, and this is the icing on the cake of humanistic product design.
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.
Good post….thanks for sharing..