Go on... say it.
What does that sound like?
/u was used for a "short" user.
Then as slightly more memory became available, it was expanded to /usr.
Initially /usr/<username>/program was being used heavily by many people and then as the idea of $PATH came into being... a blessed path was written in. This is where /usr/bin came from. to distinguish from /usr/<username>. Then a lot of people started griping that some systems things to boot where being written and put in /usr/bin.
Eventually /bin and /sbin became the places for system starting programs and other initialization programs need to boot the machine were.
So early crap was /u for homedirs. /u being cryptic, became less so with a pronounceable version "/usr" or user. Then when these things became where admins (out of being lazy and not want to compile/link everything on install) wanted to make /usr *read-only* and exportable and mounted from a central machine. /u became the user directory again and eventually /home.
Sorry, you mind is playing tricks on you again. I've referenced some mimeo-graphed training manuals I have from 1984 that were given to me with that OLD 900 series machine. they intermixed /u and /usr because at that point /u was considered legacy.