IKEA Furniture Naming: Where Do All of the Bizarre Names Come From?

Many people love shopping for furniture at IKEA. The evidence of this, is the extremely crowded parking lots at IKEA stores that many of you who love shopping there know. For those of you who don't know what IKEA is, Wikipedia describes it as "a privately-owned, international, low-cost home products retailer that sells modern, utilitarian design furniture, much of which is assembled by the consumer." It was originally founded in 1943 in Sweden, and it currently has its headquarters in The Netherlands. People love the low prices at IKEA, but one thing that has perplexed many people is the naming scheme that IKEA uses to name its furniture. To the American consumer, these names seem very random and bizarre, but there is actually a pretty complex and strict system with regards to the naming of the various types of furniture at IKEA.

A common theme for all of the different types of furniture, is that they are all single word names, with all of them coming from a Finnish, Danish, Norwegian or, of course, a Swedish origin. A desk named "Jerker" may make people puzzled at first, but when you realize that "Jerker" is a male name in Sweden and that desk chairs and desks at IKEA are named after Swedish male names, it all starts to come together. If you buy your child a Smyg, you would be buying them a lamp since all children's furniture items are named after adjectives, birds, or mammals.

For bedding items such as pillows, bed linen and bed covers, they are named after flowers, precious stones, or plants, or sometimes they are named after words that are related to sleep and comfort. The names for furniture that is used for lighting purposes are based on music terms, chemistry or meteorology terms, days, months, seasons, nautical terms or boating terms, or measures and weights.

Other furniture sold at IKEA are based on Scandinavian places names. Beds are named after Norwegian place names. Media storage furniture, coffee tables, bookshelves, and upholstered furniture are named after Swedish place names. Dining chairs and dining tables are named after Norwegian place names. Along the same lines, carpets are named after Danish place names. Garden furniture is named after some of the Swedish islands.

Just like Swedish male names were used for desks and desk chairs, Swedish female names are used for curtains and materials. Kitchen utensils are named after herbs and spices, fruits, berries and mushrooms, fish, or foreign words. Everything else in the kitchen in named using different grammatical terms. Lastly, bathroom furniture is named after Scandinavian rivers, bays and lakes.

Next time you are at IKEA, and you are shopping and trying to decipher what the names of the different pieces of furniture there may mean, this should really help to break it down, and help you to understand their naming structure. Speaking of naming, IKEA got its name in a rather unique way. The first two letters, IK, are the initials of the founder Ingvar Kamprad. He grew up in a little village called Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd, giving the name IKEA it's last two letters, EA. Who knew that such a simple buying process could have such a complex naming system?