Ikea provides yet another service to the world: a catalog of baby names

DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, HOST:

IKEA provides a lot of services to the world - affordable furniture, fun construction projects, stores that you visit with your partner when you really want to stress test your relationship. But now, the company wants to help people name their children. This month, IKEA Norway released a list of baby names - more than 800 of them - that have also been used as names of IKEA goods over the decades.

The Associated Press reports that the move comes as Norway and other Nordic countries have been experiencing a baby boom. In fact, the subsidiary quip that while the pandemic brought shortages of raw materials, quote, "there is at least no shortage of children," which is a heck of a positive spin to put on supply chain problems, but OK. The catalog, as they call it, adds a fun twist to the process of naming a baby. Now, parents can look down at their peaceful newborns and ask themselves, is this kid more of a floor lamp - Daphne - or a bar cart - Bettina?

I dug through some old catalogs. Apparently, Danielle was a curtain. I have no idea how to feel about that. But if you're in need of some self-reflection, it might be worth it to see if you're living up to how the IKEA Corporation sees you. Maybe you're a pillow, or maybe you're a file cabinet. Fortunately, the world needs both. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.