2 ms·
> Every possible product name is carefully checked to avoid undesirable meanings in other languages, political or religious affiliations and fit into our global
by markvdb 1mo ago
> Every possible product name is carefully checked to avoid undesirable meanings in other languages, political or religious affiliations and fit into our global profile.
I present to you "Svalka" wine glasses. Dump", rubbish heap", or easy, promiscuous woman of ill repute in informal Baltic (and Slavic?) slang.
- fangspire 1mo agoMy favorite Ikea product name.
- hnarn 1mo agoThen maybe you'll enjoy the swedish joke ”It’s not the fart that kills, it’s the smäll” Fart means speed, smäll (smell) means impact or bang.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 1mo agoDouble wordplay, not bad. Gives “Descartes before the horse” triple entendre vibes
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- tecleandor 1mo agoI have a "Särna" chair. "Sarna" in Spanish is "Scabies". Fun fact: Although "Sarna" comes from Latin, seems like it's only used in Romance languages present in the Iberian Peninsula (Galician, Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish...) and not for example in Italian, Romanian or French, as it's an Iberian loan word. Most other languages derive from another different Latin word, "scabiēs".
- memsom 1mo agoThe umlaut does mean that to a Swede it is not the same word sound at all. I can only guess that is why it was allowed?
- sureMan6 1mo agoThe sound is still very close in this situation (ä before r) my guess is they didn't have the Spanish sarna on their radar
- amarant 1mo agoThe source of the word is almost certainly the Swedish town Särna in this case. Note that ä is not an a, in sound it's more similar to e than a, although it is distinct from both.
- cheeseface 1mo agoSvalka has been around from at least year 2000. Might even be one of the reasons for the current practice.
- selfmodruntime 1mo agoI swear this is untrue. Half the names of ikea products allude to funny words in German.
- froh 1mo agofunny indeed! but no trash talk, no swear words, nothing gross or offending.
- pseudohadamard 1mo agoDo IKEA have farthinders in their parking lots?
- sebcat 1mo agoNo, they are slut
- huhtenberg 1mo agoKeanu was excellent in Fart :)
- mszcz 1mo agoI mean, if you were to use that name for an IKEA product, you can do worse than wine glasses :P A bed would be a little too on the nose I think.
- hunter2_ 1mo agoDoes anyone else get tripped up by the word "avoid" being positioned to apply to each item in the series, but then logically it must only apply to some (the first and second out of 3) items? { avoid meanings, avoid affiliations, avoid fitting } My solution is generally to repeat the word for each item that needs it, but I can see how the repetitiveness isn't great either.
- afiori 1mo agoAn Oxford comma before the or would make it clearer maybe
- msabalau 1mo agoYou type that as if easy promiscuous woman of ill repute were undesirable...