Ikea Norway offers help with baby names after COVID-19 boom

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Swedish retailer Ikea is known for the distinctive names of its flat-pack home products. Now, the company’s Norway branch wants to use the brand’s experience to help parents browsing the baby-naming department. Ikea Norway has built “a name bank” with more than 800 listings available on its website. The names are drawn from ones Ikea gave its furniture instead of product numbers since 1948. “After all these years, (Ikea) has built up a large ‘catalog’ to pick from,” Ikea Norway said in a statement. Norway registered the births of 56,060 babies last year, or 3,081 more than in 2020. The Ikea branch says that makes it harder to find a unique name.