IKEA: You buy it, you pronounce it
The ground has been officially broken: IKEA (pronounced “eye-KEY-uh”) is coming to Charlotte.
The Swedish mega-store is known for its affordable home furnishings, tasty meatballs, and distinctive Scandinavian names. And while the word-nerd in me gets jiggy at the sight of products named POÄNG and BESTÅ ENÖN, some may think that IKEA simply enjoys seeing us clumsy Americans struggle with three extra letters in the alphabet.
But the names do follow convention. So, thanks to our friends at Wikipedia, here is the IKEA taxonomy:
Upholstered furniture, coffee tables, media storage: Swedish place names
Beds, wardrobes, hall furniture: Norwegian place names
Dining tables and chairs: Finnish place names
Bookcase ranges: Occupations
Bathroom articles: Scandinavian lakes, rivers and bays
Kitchens: grammatical terms, sometimes other names
Chairs, desks: men’s names
Materials, curtains: women’s names
Garden furniture: Swedish islands
Carpets: Danish place names
Lighting: terms from music, chemistry, meteorology, measures, weights, seasons, months, days, boats, nautical terms
Bed linen, bed covers, pillows/cushions: flowers, plants, precious stones; words related to sleep, comfort, and cuddling
Children’s items: mammals, birds, adjectives (DUKTIG, meaning: good, well-behaved)- line
Curtain accessories: mathematical and geometrical terms
Kitchen utensils: foreign words, spices, herbs, fish, mushrooms, fruits or berries, functional descriptions
Boxes, wall decoration, pictures and frames, clocks: colloquial expressions, also Swedish place names
And in case you were wondering: IKEA is an acronym for Ingvar Kamprad, the founder, who grew up on Elmtaryd farm, in Agunnaryd.
Contributed by: Maghan Cook
I’m not sure that my IKEA product pronunciation will get any better, but I’m looking forward to many in-store practice sessions.
The popular, classic IKEA Poäng armchair (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S69840170), has a very springy/bouncy frame. The chair’s flexibility and durability is demonstrated in the store with a pneumatic machine that simulates a person sitting on it thousands of times.
Clearly the name Poäng comes from the little sound the chair makes when a really heavy person stands up from a sitting position. POÄNG!
The correct pronunciation for it is “ee-kay-ah”, it is a European brand