Sunday, February 10, 2008

You Can Speak IKEA!

Have you ever wondered what all the names mean for all the stuff that IKEA sells? I have. Now thanks to this article over at Gadling,one of my favourite travel sites, you can understand everything. Fascinating stuff! It isn't just a bunch of random letters!

Here's an excerpt:

Scandinavia unite:Sofas, coffee tables, bookshelves, media storage and doorknobs -- I agree, that last one is random -- are named after places in Sweden; beds, wardrobes and hall furniture after places in Norway; and carpets after places in Denmark. And don't think Finland gets left out; Finnish cities and places are the namesake for dining tables and chairs.

In the kitchenKitchens themselves -- no, cooking in an all-Scandinavian setting does not require you to make meatballs -- are normally named after Swedish grammatical terms. Going with the theme of cooking, kitchen utensils are named after spices, herbs, fish, fruit or berries. And just because Scandinavians are such believers in functional things, great words like Burken (meaning "the jar") describe a line of spice jars.

Vad heter du? What's your name?Men's names tend to go to chairs and desks while materials and curtains are women's names. My mother has a nice set of place mats and chair pads named after her. I however, with a standard Scandinavian name like Anna, am far too common and get nothing.


2 comments:

Lynda said...

Well it sounds like you have IKEA nailed. I read this blog post last year and laughed so hard. Make sure you 'read the names carefully'. Very Funny.

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2007/04/je_craquepour_l_1.html

I really didn't know all that about the names - always assumed they just made those names up!

swenglishexpat said...

I always walk around IKEA here in Germany with a smile on my face, since I know what the names of all the stuff mean, and I can pronounce them! But I had not observed there were categories like you described. Simple but clever!