RU
Abbreviation with 5 meanings
| Stands for | Russia |
|---|---|
| Meanings | 5 |
| Categories | Geography & Places, Religion, Technology & Computing, Education & Academia, Science & Engineering |
| Also written | Ru |
RU has five meanings. The most common are Russia (country code) and Ruth (Bible book); it can also stand for Rack unit, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and Ruthenium.
Meanings of RU at a glance
| # | RU stands for | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | Geography & Places › Country Code |
| 2 | Ruth | Religion › Bible Book |
| 3 | Rack unit | Technology & Computing › Computer Hardware |
| 4 | Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey | Education & Academia › University |
| 5 | Ruthenium | Science & Engineering › Chemical Element |
1. Russia
Geography & Places · Country Code Abbreviations
Russia, the largest country in the world at about 17.1 million square kilometres, spans 11 time zones. Moscow is the capital, RUS the alpha-3 code, the ruble trades as RUB, and websites use .ru and the Cyrillic .рф.
Example: Sanctions compliance teams screen any payment routed to RU banks.
The Soviet-era .su domain is still in use alongside .ru. Russian athletes competed as ROC at the 2020 and 2022 Olympics because of doping sanctions. The language code is ru, as in ru-RU.
2. Ruth (Ru)
Religion · Bible Book Abbreviations
Short book of four chapters about Ruth, a Moabite widow who stays loyal to her mother-in-law Naomi and marries Boaz, becoming the great-grandmother of King David. Her vow "whither thou goest, I will go" (1:16) is often read at weddings.
Example: The reading from Ru 1:16–17 was chosen for the couple's ceremony.
SBL and Chicago's traditional list do not abbreviate Ruth, but Catholic Bibles and Chicago's short forms use Ru; Rth also appears in some indexes. Jewish communities read Ruth on the festival of Shavuot. In the Hebrew Bible it belongs to the Writings, not the historical books.
3. Rack unit
Technology & Computing · Computer Hardware Abbreviations
Standard unit of height for equipment in 19-inch racks, equal to 1.75 inches (44.45 mm). Servers, switches and storage are described by height, such as 1U or 2U, and a typical full rack holds 42U.
Example: The new storage server takes 4 RU, so we need to free up space in rack B.
The abbreviation is usually shortened to U when used with a number. The 19-inch rack dates to early telephone and railroad signaling equipment and is standardized in EIA-310. "Half-U" and "0U" refer to fractional or vertical side-mounted gear. Colocation providers often price space per U or per full rack.
4. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Education & Academia · University Abbreviations
New Jersey's flagship public university, chartered in 1766 as Queen's College, making it the eighth-oldest college in the US. Its main campus is in New Brunswick, with others in Newark and Camden, and its Scarlet Knights joined the Big Ten in 2014.
Example: Rutgers and Princeton played the first intercollegiate football game in 1869, and RU won 6–4.
The university uses "Rutgers" and the RU block logo. Selman Waksman discovered streptomycin at Rutgers, winning the 1952 Nobel Prize. Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences includes the state's former medical university.
5. Ruthenium (Ru)
Science & Engineering · Chemical Element Abbreviations
Hard and brittle, ruthenium (element 44) belongs to the platinum group of metals. It hardens platinum and palladium jewelry alloys, forms thick-film chip resistors and electrical contacts, and is the basis of catalysts such as the Grubbs catalysts that made olefin metathesis a routine tool of organic synthesis.
Example: The resistor network uses Ru oxide thick films printed on a ceramic substrate.
Karl Ernst Claus isolated ruthenium in 1844 at Kazan University from residues of platinum ore from the Ural Mountains, and named it after Ruthenia, a Latin name for Russia. Robert Grubbs shared the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for metathesis research that relied on his ruthenium catalysts.
Related abbreviations
More country code abbreviations
- RE – Réunion
- RO – Romania
- ROC – Russian Olympic Committee
- RS – Serbia
- RW – Rwanda
- SA – Saudi Arabia
- SB – Solomon Islands
- SC – Seychelles
See all 270 country code abbreviations →