Volvo to NAME their new cars – but will it be the IKEA route or Norse Gods?

Volvo boss Hakan Samuelsson says that Volvo’s new generation of EVs will get “a name, like a child”, but what names will Volvo choose.

Carmakers tend to use number and letter monikers for their cars because it’s much easier to sell them around the world without linguistic clashes. Like Mitsubishi discovering their Pajero means ‘Wanker’ in Spanish slang and, more recently, Hyundai discovering Kona means ‘see you next Tuesday’ in Portuguese.

So the revelation from Volvo boss Hakan Samuelsson that future Volvos – previewed by the recent Volvo Concept Recharge – will come with “a name, like a child”, is quite surprising.

We have no knowledge yet of what names Volvo is going to use – and we’re not sure Volvo has either – but there are a couple of Swedish routes they could go.

They could follow the IKEA route of naming, mainly, after Swedish and Scandanavian stuff, from lakes to place names and islands to flowers and plants. But all names in Swedish regardless of where the products are sold.

So if Volvo goes this route we could see cars named after Swedish islands, for example, going up in size. So the 40 Series could become the Volvo Orust, the 60 Series the Volvo Sodertorn and the 90 Series the Volvo Oland.

Although perhaps a bit of a cliche, the logical route would be to expand on the ‘Thor’ used for Volvo headlights by using Norse God names.

That could mean the Volvo Odin, Volvo Loki and Volvo Tyr, although we think Volvo might draw the line at Volvo Balder.

We’ll find out before too long what Volvo’s new names are going to be with the replacement for the XC90 looming. In the meantime, if you have any other ideas for Volvo names, let us know in the comments.