Talking about ロサン and ウサン


I was listening to a talking-head this morning. He kept referring to ロサン and
ウサン. It's pretty clear he's referring to Russia and Ukraine. However, when I
do a google search on these words, it's not really pulling up anything useful.
For ロサン, for example, google decides that I must really be intending to search
for something about Los Angeles.

I'm fairly confident about what these two words mean. But, I'm curious about
their derivation. It's clear that ロ comes from ロシア and ウ comes from ウクライナ.

  * What is サン? Is this sort of expression used for other nations? (I haven't noticed it before.)
  * Why not just say ロシア (same number of mora) or ウクライナ (a bit longer)?
  * Are these terms polite? Derogatory?

What also interests me is that he also spoke about Israel and the US. For
Israel, he always said イスラエル and for America, more often than not, he said
アメリカ合衆国. Why not also abbreviate these too?




It is simply common to use the initial letter to abbreviate some names. The さん
is simply the polite suffix as used with human names like 鈴木さん.

First remember USSR is ソ連 abbreviating **ソ** ビエト **連** 邦.

As other examples, [エ軍](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A8%E8%BB%8D) or
[ア軍](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E8%BB%8D) is for baseball teams
in the U.S. The Wikipedia says they are ambiguos, but the former means Los
Angeles Angels for the obvious reason now.

When to use this abbreviation is largely random. I believe it is similar how
to create abbreviations in English (like,
[START](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%88%A6%E7%95%A5%E5%85%B5%E5%99%A8%E5%89%8A%E6%B8%9B%E6%9D%A1%E7%B4%84)
taking ST form _strategy_ ). I think イ軍 should be appearing, meaning Israeli
army sooner or later. America or UK or other countries is not abbreviated with
a single katakana, just because they have an associated kanji (米/英/..).

Using the さん is, as the other answer notes, just a whim of the speaker. One
element is that those single-katakana abbreviation would not be used alone and
they are used mostly in war contexts suffixed by 軍. To use it alone, it would
require kanji. So Russia as a nation will be always expressed by 露 and not by
ロ. For this reason, ウクライナ is usually written in full.

As a kind of related expression, there is
[露助](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9C%B2%E5%8A%A9), which is a derogatory
way of calling Russians. (Not that abbreviation per se is derogatory; neither
is ロさん/ウさん, I think.)




Country names are sometimes abbreviated with one kanji, so my guess is that ロ
and ウ are such abbreviations (露 and 宇) rather than their initials in katakana.
さん is probably the same thing as what is used to person names. It makes the
story sound less serious or somewhat comical, but not derogatory.

As it is by far less common to use 以 (or other kanji) as abbreviation of
Israel, イさん is much harder to be understood, while 米さん (べいさん) is expected to
be understood easily if used in the same context. Anyway, use of (abbreviation
+ さん) are not common at all.

