Sasha is the Russian diminutive for both Alexander and Alexandra, so it is ambiguous, like Alex would be in English. Since the former is more common in Russia, there are more male Sashas than female ones. Likewise Misha being the Russian diminutive for both male and female forms of Michael is more likely to be male than female there. In Britain there is a general assumption that names ending in A are female, so these names are more often given to girls. This causes endless confusion for Italians called Andrea (Italian for Andrew).

One way that Sacha can arise is as the French spelling of Sasha.

The diminutive for Ivan (my name, but I'm not Russian) is Vanya.