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Comment by wingerlang | Hacker News Reader

Trådfri literally translated is "threadless" but it can probably be interpreted as cordless as well.

I've never heard anyone say "trådfri" before. The normal word would be "sladdlös" at least where I'm from.

Almost all Ikea product names are either place names or Swedish words that are somewhat but not always directly/logically connected to the product.

Given how tenuous some of the connections can be, I'm assuming they're often picked with more emphasis on how they sound/read/works in other countries rather than precision.

I live in London, and the most entertaining part about visiting my local Ikea is hearing English people trying to pronounce the product names...

I'm struggling with the 'a' in this one which has the weird accent, "å". I have no idea what that accent above the 'a' is indicating.

Most of the time it's pronounced as the "a" in ball.

It is certainly a brand name made from a literal translation of wireless. Although "trådlös" (without wires) is the normal Swedish translation.

Yeah, "trådlös" is more common than "sladdlös", just forgot about that word for some reason.

Trådfri is valid Danish for "wire free", as far as I can tell. This being said, I don't know whether it's idiomatic.

Men min dansk er ikke så godt, så...

I think it might be a clever IKEA marketing trick: a lot of countries know exactly what it means (I would assume that most of Scandinavia, and the Germanic languages would be able to figure it out). For the others, it's just another random Scandinavian word and orthography to remember.

In Danish you would say "trådløs" for cordless. "Trådfri" is not used, but it is easy to understand the meaning.

Where I live (eastern Sweden) we all say "trådlös", so almost "trådfri". But IKEA have many names that either sound like gibberish or are just strange.

Oh, "trådlös" is probably the most common one actually, now that you mention it. Completely forgot about that word for some reason.

It's hard to trademark common or idiomatic words. So using words that are almost right makes sense.

'Trådlös' is the usual way to say it. Though arguably '-lös' (-'less') could be construed as having a negative connotation, whereas '-fri' ('-free') has a positive one. That's probably why they went with 'Trådfri'.

It would feel similarly odd in Dutch. Perhaps they tested both names and the former 'sounded' nicer in other languages?

Similar in German: "drahtlos" is the real word, but "drahtfrei" is understandable, and conveys being freed from something.

"einwandfrei": a thing free of problems or restrictions

IKEA uses Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish. They have a bed named after the Norwegian town I live in.

trådfri sounds like half Danish half Norwegian to me; English cordless or wireless is Norwegian trådløs.

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