"SAM" is a transliteration of the English abbreviation "Sam", which means "surface-to-air missile". Every type of surface-to-air missile developed by the Soviet Union is named and numbered by itself. However, the west found it inconvenient to use Russian, so it nicknamed the Soviet surface-to-air missiles in English and numbered them accordingly. For example, one of the most advanced surface-to-air missiles that the Soviet Union has just served, was nicknamed "fighter" by the West, and the code name of "Dou Shi" missile was SA- 12.