Last week, the TV game show Jeopardy! featured a contestant named Nik Berry.
After introducing Nik to the audience, Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings asked Nik about his name:
Nik Berry, a social studies teacher, comes to us from Baltimore. Now, I know a lot of Niks, but you might be the only one who’s named after — what?
Nik responded:
Well, my parents wanted an alternate spelling of Nicholas, so they went with n-i-k-l-a-s because, when they were shopping at IKEA before my birth, they saw a shelf called the Niklas.
Hundreds of U.S. babies have been named Ikea, but this is the first person I know of who was named with a specific piece of IKEA furniture in mind.
According to IKEA’s Norwegian-language Navnekatalogen (“Name Directory”), the Niklas shelf was introduced in 1981. Here’s what it looked like:
What are your thoughts on the name Niklas?
(And, did you know that a handful of U.S. babies have been named after Jeopardy contestants?)
Sources: Contestant Zone – Jeopardy.com, Jeopardy! tweet (20 Jul. 2023)