@borrof
Seeing they share a border as well as long history with Russia, naturally they have a separate character to refer to it

@mur2501 why aren't you sleeping?

@borrof

Forgot

@trinsec
Well they have shared historically a border with Russia so yess but I have to confirm this with a Chinese person

I liked the big profit pizza land

@mur2501 @trinsec that's true (I'm not chinese, but I have some chinese knowledge). 俄 (é) is russia and short for 俄罗斯 éluósī=russia.

@mur2501 @trinsec this char have lot of other meaning. In chinese you often use one character, that is a part of a name, to indicate it in another part. For example, older forme of France, was 法兰西 (Falanxi: law+lan(still orchid)+xi(west)), probably because of the old name of Francie, at its beginning, during Franks (germans) governments. and now it's 法国 fa-country, like 德国 de-country (de-utschland), or 英国 (ying-country (eng-land). Spain is 西班牙 (xi ban ya) =>spania. That's mainly phonetic transcriptions. When people ask me where I come from and say fa-guo, older one, say: ah! Falanxi.

@mur2501 @trinsec Iceland, is one of the rare case, where the translation isn't phonetic, That's called 冰岛 (ice island, even if the original is ice land). And Groenland (meaning « green land » in Danish, that is a Denemark territory, so not really a country), is called 格陵兰 ge ling lan (still the orchid). japan (日本 origin of sun), Korea (朝鲜 fresh morning, south korea changed its name for 韩国 country of Han, north keep korea former name) or Vietnam (越南 Yue (name for several people in south china by north china people) from south), have so semantic transcription bu was first wrote in Chinese in these countries, as Chinese bring them their first scripts.

India is called 印度 Yindu (seal/stamp/print + degree/measure unit), that's also phonetic transcription.

@trinsec @mur2501 in fact, it's mainly a phonetic transcription. orchi is 兰 lan, that sounds like land (one char is one syllable in chinese languages and there is no final d in mandarin).