Isn't it spelled "Czarina"?
The Russian title цар has the same etymology as the German
kaiser and Swedish
kejsare, they both are ultimately derived from
caesar, which originally was just a name but already by the late first century had become a title. The English
emperor and French
empereur both ultimately derive from the Latin
imperator, which was originally a Roman military title akin to commander or generalissimo, but which already by the first century had become adopted as a title exclusive for the emperor. Caesar and imperator could be used inter-changedly, and that is why we generally feel no worries translating kaiser into emperor and emperor into kaiser, since both offices ultimately share a common origin, as they were used by Europeans working in the shadow of Ancient Rome. Now of course, it can be debated whether or not we should really call the Emperor of Japan an emperor, seeing his title has no ideological heritage from the Roman Empire, and it's basically just a matter of convention that we translate
tennō (天皇) (which really means heavenly sovereign) into emperor. Contrary to what Pablo Sanchez might have thought, there is no universal template for human rulers, and had things been different, and the first European explorers to Japan decided that
tennō meant king, then we'd today be talking about the King of Japan, and there would be nothing different about the throne in any sense.
But I digress. For some reason, many people in the English-speaking world refers to a female Russian ruler as a
tsarina or
czarina, which etymologically is quite interesting. As wikipedia tells us, this comes from German
tsarin or
czarin, and as we all know, in German, feminine titles are constructed by taking the masculine title and adding
-in to the end (see for example
könig and
königin for king and queen). Indeed, the German word for empress is kaiserin. Why they decided to use czarin rather than kaiserin was because apparently these Germans were (like most of are) enamored by the foreign and exotic, and
tsar to them sounded cooler than plain old
kaiser (and it's for the same reason we say
Kaiser Wilhelm and not
Emperor William). Still, these Germans doesn't appear to have actually known what the Russians called their female rulers, so they just feminized it after the German rule book.
Consequently,
Tsarina or
Czarina, is an anglicized German word, which is a Russian word feminized by German linguistic rules, which itself is a russified Latin title that originally was a name. It's a Frankenstein's monster of a title.
The Russians themselves refer to their female sovereigns as царица. So, if you're going to call the Russian emperor by the transliteration of the Russian word for
emperor, then it sort of makes sense that you call the Russian empress by the transliteration of the Russian word for
empress, and not go on some bizarre detour via the German tongue. Depending on whether you transliterate ц as ts (as in
Tsar) or cz (as in
Czar) you get either
Tsaritsa or
Czaricza. If you get
Tsaricza or
Czaritsa, then you're being inconsistent in your transliteration.
As to why I went for
Czaricza and not
Tsaritsa?
I just feel the former looks cooler.