Reading strange-sounding Swedish words is part of the joy of shopping at IKEA. Within the labyrinth of stylish flat pack furniture is a pänoply of ödd, åccented pröduct nämes, printed on hang tags, walls and banners. What most shoppers don’t know is that the names of those 12,000 products conform to a strict internal logic that offers a peek into Scandinavian culture.
At a Jan. 25 product showcase in New York City, IKEA designer Jon Karlsson explained that IKEA has a crack team of product namers, who assign names from a database of Swedish words. Bookcases are named after professional occupations (Expedit means shop keeper) or boys’ names (The bestselling Billy bookcase is named after IKEA employee Billy Likjedhal). Outdoor furniture is named after Scandinavian islands (Äpplarö an island in the Stockholm archipelago and Västerön is in Aaland). Rugs are named after cities and towns in Denmark or Sweden (Ådum, Stockholm, Silkeborg), while bed sheets, comforters and pillowcases are named after flowers and plants. (Häxört or circaea lutetian is an herb in the primrose family).
The rules for naming were devised by IKEA’s founder Ingvar Kamprad, who struggled with dyslexia and had trouble remembering the order of numbers in item codes. The name IKEA itself is acronym for Ingvar, Kamprad, Elmtaryd (his family’s farm) and Agunnaryd (the village in Småland where he grew up in).
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