Flickr creator Cal Henderson has come up with the Ikea Game, in which people try to identify what type of furnishings those bizarre sounding Ikea names refer to. According to this Grauniad article there’s a way to win the Ikea game every time, but it involves learning Swedish and a lot of Scandanavian place names.

Ikea product names follow a system: because the company’s founder, Ingvar Kamprad, is dyslexic, he found that naming products with proper names and words made them easier to identify.

Sofas, coffee tables, bookshelves, media storage and doorknobs are named after places in Sweden (Klippan, Malmö); beds, wardrobes and hall furniture after places in Norway; carpets after places in Denmark and dining tables and chairs after places in Finland. Bookcases are mainly occupations (Bonde, peasant farmer; Styrman, helmsman). Bathroom stuff is named after lakes and rivers.

Kitchens are generally grammatical terms, and kitchen utensils are spices, herbs, fish, fruits, berries, or functional words such as Skarpt (it means sharp, and it’s a knife). Chairs and desks are Swedish men’s names (Roger, Joel); materials and curtains are women’s names. Children’s items are mammals, birds and adjectives (Ekorre is a set of children’s toy balls; it means squirrel).

Hmmm… I got 4/10.

Looks like I’m going to have to do some serious catalogue cramming.