During the Spring and Autumn Period, most of Jiangsu was the State of Wu. Why not call it "Wu" for short, but "Su" for short?

Jiangsu's abbreviation is indeed more complicated than other provinces. Why do you say that? Because the so-called Jiangsu Province is actually the merger of two completely different cultural regions in ancient times, namely Xuzhou (where Liu Bei and Lu Bu staged the scene of being brothers, but secretly fighting with each other) and Yangzhou (Yangzhou, one of Kyushu, includes several provinces in the southeast now, but the core area of ancient Yangzhou is now Jiangsu), that is to say, among so many provinces in China, Jiangsu is a rare collection of Central Plains characteristics and Jiangnan characteristics.

It is precisely because of this situation that the abbreviation of Jiangsu Province has also brought many difficulties. You see other provinces, Henan is the land of ancient Yuzhou, and Henan is no problem for short; Shanxi is the land of the ancient state of Jin, which is no problem for short; Hebei is the land of ancient Jizhou, so it is called Hebei for short; Shandong was the land of Qi and Lu in ancient times, but the voice of Qi was close to Ji's surname, so Lu was finally chosen.

But what about Jiangsu? If we follow this line of thinking, we will fall into a dilemma. First, according to ancient geography, which do you prefer, Xuzhou or Yangzhou? Second, according to the ancient saying, there was Xu in the north, and the rebellion of that year even disturbed the personal expedition of the Zhou Emperor. Pengcheng later became the capital of Xiang Yu, the overlord of Western Chu. How to use Chu? But with Chu, Hubei should be excited. We are the authentic capital of Chu, but here, is it you or me? Of course, it didn't work for anyone in the end. Hubei made a mistake, and Jiangsu is embarrassed to argue with you about this.

If you use Wu, Suzhou and Nanjing will naturally be happy, but the Jiangbei area will be uneven. Moreover, Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province, was also a part of the State of Wu. If Jiangsu is called Wu for short, people in Hangzhou will be unbalanced (that is to say, it is easy to have an accident with the abbreviation of ancient masterpieces, and only a little is said here). Therefore, the abbreviation of Jiangsu cannot be used in the first two ways. Then let's do something simple. Since the name of the province is Jiangsu, we will take one of the words as the abbreviation.

At first, everyone chose the word Jiang. This usage is still very common in many places today, such as? Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai? Everyone knows that Jiang is from Jiangsu, but why didn't everyone use it on more occasions later? Jiang? What about this abbreviation? Because there are too many provinces whose names are related to rivers, such as Jiangxi and Zhejiang. We must make a series of Jiang-style characters. It is entirely possible to rename Zhejiang Jiangdong, southern Anhui and Jiangsu Jiangnan, northern Anhui and Jiangsu Jiangbei, but it is obviously impossible now.