The Curious Case of IKEA Vocabulary | Hacker News Reader

The Curious Case of IKEA Vocabulary

lar5.com

124 pointsMihikaBasu70 comments

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IKEA product names fall into a few main groups.

Beyond these groups, there is a curious taxonomy of product names.

● Bathroom items: Names of Swedish lakes and bodies of water

● Linens: Flowers and plants

● Bedroom and Living Room Furniture: Norwegian places

● Bookcases: Professions and Scandinavian boy’s names

● Bowls and Vases: Swedish place names, adjectives, spices, herbs, fruits, and berries

● Boxes, Pictures, and Wall Decorations: Swedish slang expressions and Swedish place names

● Children’s Products: Mammals, birds, adjectives

● Desks and Chairs: Scandinavian boy’s names

● Fabrics and Curtains: Scandinavian girl’s names

● Outdoor Furniture: Scandinavian islands

● Kitchen Accessories: Fish, mushrooms and adjectives

● Lighting: Units of measurement, seasons, months, days, shipping and nautical terms, Swedish place names

● Rugs: Danish place names

● Sofas, Chairs and Dining Sets: Swedish place names

There was also some brouhaha a while ago, about product names for floor coverings, like doormats used as placeholders for an 'in-joke'.

>Academics in Denmark have accused Ikea of “Swedish imperialism” because it names cheaper products such as doormats after Danish places.

They claim that more expensive items such as chairs and beds are named after Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian towns, while cheaper items such as draught excluders have been given Danish town names.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/mar/08/danish...

They're missing an explanation for one of the more famous but subtle IKEA naming puns.

"Indira" is at this page says an Indian name and also the name of an India-inspired IKEA bedspread. But bedspred in Swedish would be "överkast" which would translate directly as "over throw" but could also be read as "over caste". From a Swedish PoV the Indian caste system looks like a social ranking system and to Swedes one of the most famous (and thus presumably socially high ranking) Indians "just happened" to be named... Indira.

Well, she did champion the lower castes, so there's also that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garibi_Hatao

Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.

I mean, obviously possible but I suspect that the clumsy translation adds a lot of obtuseness to it. In Swedish it looks straightforward enough that you only need to squint just for a moment when you see "överkast" and "Indira" together and then you get that familiar feeling of "How could I ever miss that?".

If you’d like another data point, I’m also Swedish, and if I saw a bedspread/överkast with an Indian name in an otherwise Swedish, ”punny” context, I would 100% think ”oh, because of the caste system”. I find it very unlikely that they would’ve gone for this name without making the connection.

The bit connecting Indira Gandhi to a high/”over” caste is a bit more tenuous to me, I’d just have thought the idea was as simple as caste -> India -> Indian name (Indira), but it’s certainly possible.

Except the IKEA names have many such "dad joke" names.

In Germany, we have the children's bed "Gutvik" which, if you pronounce it the German way, sounds like "gut fick" which literally means good fuck.

Or the "Poäng" chair, which sounds like "Po eng" meaning tight on the butt.

Can confirm that whenever I read/hear Poäng I think "Po eng". Somewhat disappointed that this is not the reasoning behind the name

Poäng is swedish for "point"/"score".

Linkrot? This vocabulary site uses "query" parameter, while Ikea's search uses "q".

e.g. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/search/products/?q=franklin

Great list, it's a pitty it does not list what type of product it is. Also the links are broken for me due to redirection to my local language variant of the IKEA page.

Also note product names are not the same in different countries. My favourite is electrical extension cord KOPPLA what is similar to "kopla" - past tense of verb to give electric shock.

Well, KOPPLA also sells in the US, so unlikely it is a pun in Slovak :)

Pun not intended indeed.

Koppla is probably cognate with the English word “couple” which can mean to connect things. (It can also mean to fuck, so there’s that)

Koppla means connect/plug in in swedish. In a sentence

Skulle to kunna koppla i sladden?

Can you plug in the cable.

So I just think it's a coincident

All the "place in Småland" had me Google "ikea Småland," because I vaguely recalled it's their customer daycare, and I found this horror:

https://www.facebook.com/IKEASingapore/posts/129956202012053...

> We’re about to transform Småland from a playground into a ‘press-play-ground’!

> Our studies of children's play habits reveal that today's kids prefer tablets to physical activity. So we're replacing the magical forest with a haven of sitting pods with tablets—recreating the way your kids play.

Edit: I guess it might be an April fools' joke, though timezone differences show it as March 30 for me: https://mashable.com/article/ikea-trolls-everyone. Man am I tired of corporate April fools. It's lame and literally never ends.

Just a note: this was posted on April 1st (may show up as Mar 30th for Americans).

This brilliant April Fools' joke you mean.

If you didn't find out about the meaning behing the naming: Småland (which also happens to be the county I'm from) can be directly translated to Small Land. So a land for the smalls, and the tradition of puns continue.

IKEA also originates from Småland, but not sure that matters in this case.

OT - I've heard of Småland! When I was growing up we had a wonderful dog whose breed no one seemed to be able to positively identify. Vets suspected all kinds of possible mixes, until my sister saw a picture of a Småland hound (Smålandsstövare) which was a perfect match. Of course we could never be sure, but looking at pictures of them now I see my family's dog.

It's probably not so funny from a Western perspective, where companies would drop a press release like this without a second thought.

>Man am I tired of corporate April fools. It's lame and literally never ends.

In general I'd agree with you, as they're usually blatant PR attempts instead of actual pranks, but some of the comments on that Facebook link are glorious.

Sometimes I wonder if the WWW was created as the ultimate outrage generation machine.

I remember reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and thinking it was like reading an IKEA catalog thanks to all the Scandinavian names.

And then there was a scene (in the second book, IIRC), where there literally is a listing of products from the IKEA catalog.

That was the scene where Salander was furnishing her apartment if I remember correctly. The apartment was presented through her very technical viewpoint and IKEA catalog.

But a couple of chapters later there is a scene when Blomkvist visits the place and the description through his POV is totally different. It shows how different these two perceive the world.

Someone told me the other day they name the premium stuff with Swedish names and the cheap stuff with names from the surrounding countries.

I had to check this to see if there's any truth to it, and unfortunately it seems like a fib.

> Beds, hall furniture and wardrobes are named after town and cities in Norway such as Asker, Ulsberg and Klubbo. The rugs at IKEA are named after places in Denmark, so expect to see names like Hellum, Elverdam and Nysted. Finland rounds out the Scandinavian neighbors with having dining tables and chairs named after places like Pello, Bredskär and Harola.

Ha. Thanks for checking!

What we’re the Swedish names mostly used for?

Everything.

Doesn't make sense since LACK is a Swedish name and it's a 5€ sofa table made out of cardboard. Still a good table though but not premium in any way.

Very popular in the 3D printing community.

Or the famous LackRack

A lot of the "Mystery names" on the list sounds an awful lot like made-up Swedish towns (I'm assuming that if they were real the author would have found them). E.g.:

Bergsbo - could be a made-up town name, but it could also roughly be translated to "mountain dweller".

Bertby - Would literally translate to Bert (Swedish boy's name) village.

Biby - Bee village.

Billsta - -sta is a common suffix for places in Sweden.

Bjurön - Bjur is an old name for beaver, and the name literally translates to Beaver Island. Furthermore, bjur is (according to the Swedish National Encyclopedia) a common prefix used in village names. https://www.ne.se/uppslagsverk/encyklopedi/l%C3%A5ng/bjur.

The official "keeper of place names" in Sweden is Lantmäteriet, the Swedish geodetic survey. Unfortunately, the search feature at minkarta.lantmateriet.se seems to be down at the moment. However, OpenStreetMap lists at least five islands or islets named "Bjurön", several neighbourhoods, villages and such named Billsta, two farms named Biby, a village named Bertby in (largely Sweish-speaking) Österbotten in Finland, several villages and farms named Bergsbo, etc. My guess would be that nearly all of those names that are plausible Swedish place names actually exist somewhere.

There is also Ortnamnsregistret, where there are 5 hits for Biby, 3 hits for Bertby, etc.

I'm terribly disappointed that my favorite couch is missing, the Dromminge. Looks like this:

https://offerup.com/item/detail/33576960

I still have mine, almost 20 years later. It's currently my 4yo's bed.

What really surprised me though is that Ikea apparently has another item called Dromminge. It's a wall lamp that looks like a balloon:

https://www.ikeaddict.com/ikeapedia/en/Product/40330895/ca-e...

Why on earth would they recycle the name? Did they run out of Swedish words? What does it mean?

Google Translate says “dreaming”.

“Drömminge” is most likely a reference to a place outside of Värnamo in Småland [1]. As a native speaker (although not a linguist), my guess is that the name is derived from “Dröm” (dream), conjugated into “Drömma” (to dream), and then into “Drömminge” which with the “-inge” suffix turns it into a place name: “Place of dreaming”.

[1]: https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=Dr%C3%B6mminge#ma...

Google Translate, when encountering a word it does not know, will just pick something that it vaguely sounds like, or sometimes, make up an entirely new nonsense word.

Do not, under any circumstances, trust Google Translate to give you a reasonable answer.

Well that's pretty awful.

> I'm terribly disappointed that my favorite couch is missing, the Dromminge. Looks like this:

> https://offerup.com/item/detail/33576960

On a slightly different topic, it sucks that Ikea seems to delete the information about discontinued products. They really should keep it online (with manuals, etc).

Ikea is evil

> AINA: Swedish girl name

I'm Swedish and I didn't know this was an actual name. The word is more well-known here as a slang term for police (it's mainly used in immigrant-dense areas).

Well, isn't it interesting how we all have had different experiences.

I'm also from Sweden and I have never ever heard "aina" used as a slang word, much less for the police. I believe you, but, as for "more well-known", I will go with "Doubt" on that one.

But I've heard of the name and am surprised that there are people who haven't. I'm pretty sure it's a Finnish name (but cf. Anna, Anya, etc..). You sometimes see it spelled "Ajna", which probably is a Swedification.

Aina is indeed a name, although I don't know how "Swedish" it is. Two famous Ainas are Aina Erlander (Wife of Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander) and Aina Berg (Famous swimmer), but the name is popular outside of Sweden as well.

But I do agree that probably today "Aina" is more familiar to people (born after the 90s at least) as a nickname for the police. First times I came across it I think was from Swedish gangsta rap songs, where the phrase "Aina, La hora" seems to be a popular phrase, something that I think would be translated to "The cops, The whores" or something like that.

I'd say the term was "popularized" by The Latin Kings[0] in the 90s already, so I'm a bit surprised anybody born in the 70s or later wouldn't know it.

[0] Pioneering Swedish rap group - for the small subset of HN:ers who aren't into Swedish Hip Hop history :)

Some of us don't listen to that... stuff.

A few years ago they had the wood treatment "Behandla". Being german, we could get the joke for once :)

Slightly disappointed it's not on the list...

What is the joke?

“Behandla” means “to treat”

Like the bed called "Gutvik", which for nordic languages sounds a bit like the translation for "Good F*k". But they should have perhaps used that one for a large double bed...

Or "Appelkaka", the Apple-Cake. "Kaka" sounds like the word for vulgar word for excrements....

Or the Ikea "Jerker", which is a desk

In Swedish, vik is bay. Gut isn’t Swedish at all*. Kaka isn’t pronounced like caca, it’s the A sound of law in the first syllable.

Jerker is just a name, surely not limited to Sweden.

*It can be “related to Gotland” I guess but that’s a stretch.

I want to second that all of the above is nonsense, except that äppelkaka means apple cake and Jerker is, in fact, a desk from IKEA. Neither of these names are meant to have any vulgar connotations at all, and if they do it’s not from a Swedish perspective (I can see an English speaker giggling about Jerker, sure).

I wonder what långfjäll means? It’s a wonderful chair and isn’t on the list.

It means long mountain, and it's probably taken from a specific mountain with that name even if it sounds generic. Probably this one: https://www.svenskaturistforeningen.se/guider-tips/leder/lan...

Could also be in Halland!

https://ortnamnsregistret.isof.se/place-names/1304478?place-...

Long Fell, to give a direct translation.

I looked though the list, an I don't believe it's a native Swedish speaker who has created this list. Found a couple of very strange explanations. Anyway, pretty fun project.

Do you have some examples, out of curiosity?

Given the tutorials on Rubik's cube on the website, I guess it's indeed run by Swedish speedcuber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Petrus. He's Swedish, but he may out of practice since he's been living abroad for at least 25 years.

I looked briefly at the list, and didn't see anything that stood out, btw. Native Swedish speaker here.

Great analysis but a shame to see an unreadable mobile site in 2021

It works great on my aging Iphone X though?

I can't read the Swedish words in the left column they just appear as tiny blocks unless I zoom right in. Pixel 4, latest Chrome.

It's a Chrome design flaw. Mobile Chrome tries to guess what is "main content" and shrinks other text.

It looks better in Firefox.

On desktop, somehow the space key has been hijacked so you can't scroll through the page by pressing space -- instead it takes you back to the top!

It looks like a hobby site so I wouldn't fault it for not being updated to work with modern shiny. The site might even predate the mobile era.

IKEA should create a programming language with only Swedish keywords.

Should come with a Language Server Protocol extension, this would be needed.

Not made by IKEA but a Swedish programming language none the less: https://github.com/pushmatrix/fikascript

    <script type="text/fikascript">
      om (x < 5) {
        konsol.log("hej!");
      } annars {
        konsol.log("nej!");
      }
    </script>

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