How did IKEA get its name?

One of the most familiar names in furniture is really an address label. Each of its four letters points to a person or a place in one corner of rural Sweden.

I and K are Ingvar Kamprad, the founder. E is Elmtaryd, the family farm where he grew up. A is Agunnaryd, the nearby village and parish. Both sit in Småland, a region of southern Sweden.

Kamprad was 17 when he started the business in 1943. It did not sell furniture. It was a mail-order company dealing in small goods. The IKEA Museum lists pens, wallets, watches, costume jewellery and nylon stockings. Britannica mentions pens and lighters. The name was chosen before anyone knew what the company would become, which is why it describes its founder rather than its products.

Furniture arrived in 1948, five years in. The first catalogue followed in 1951, printed in Swedish. Britannica records a showroom in Älmhult in 1953. The first full store opened in the same town on October 28, 1958. Its sign read Möbel-IKÉA, with möbel meaning "furniture."

The flat pack is usually dated to 1956. The best-known version of the story involves Gillis Lundgren, IKEA's fourth employee. He was photographing a leaf-shaped table called Lövet, introduced that year, for the catalogue. It would not fit in his car. According to Wallpaper*, he sawed off the legs to transport it and put it back together on set. The idea stuck. Britannica credits flat packing with cutting costs and letting the company lower its prices. Lundgren later designed the Billy bookcase.

The naming habit spread from the company to its products. Kamprad was dyslexic, and he found that real names were easier to remember than long product codes. So IKEA items carry proper names and words, many of them Scandinavian place names. According to Wikipedia, sofas and coffee tables take Swedish place names. A sofa bought far from Sweden may be named for a Swedish town, just as the company is.

One detail is easy to miss. The acronym puts the founder first, but two of its four letters are geography. IKEA is half a person and half a place.