What Ikea Product Names REALLY Mean

Grundtal? Mölby? Ikea product names can be a mouthful for the English-speaking set.

But as you may not have guessed while slowly losing your soul to aisles of cheap cutlery, there's a method to the madness. Ikea products are named after all sorts of Scandinavian people, places and things, with a specialized system determining which types of products get which titles.

Sofas, chairs and tables, for example, use Swedish place names. Kitchen accessories are named for fish or mushroom species. The Dagstorp sofa shares its title with a Viking-age granite memorial in southern Sweden, Flavorwire points out. The Smörboll bedding set gets its name from a beautiful little flower native to cooler regions of the Northern Hemisphere.

And every Ikea product gets a name chosen with love and care.

"Typically, the name is hand-picked from an available database maintained by Ikea of Sweden," Janice Simonsen, design spokeswoman for Ikea U.S., told The Huffington Post.  "But sometimes the designer or the product developer will come up with a new name."

Simonsen disclosed the exact schema they use, in case you were wondering:

Beds, wardrobes and hall furniture: Norwegian place names

Sofas, armchairs, dining chairs and dining tables: Swedish place names

Bookcases: Professions, Scandinavian boy's names

Desks, desk chairs and swivel chairs: Scandinavian boy's names

Garden furniture: Scandinavian islands

Rugs: Danish place names

Lighting: Measurement units, seasons, months, days, shipping and nautical terms, Swedish place names 

Fabrics and curtains: Scandinavian girls' names

Children's products: Mammals, birds and descriptive words

Kitchen accessories: Fishes, mushrooms and descriptive words

Boxes, wall decoration, pictures and frames, clocks: Swedish slang expressions, Swedish place names

Bowls, vases, candles, candle holders: Swedish place names, descriptive words, spices, herbs, fruits and berries

And if you don't know what an Ikea product name means, just pun it out!

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