I have made a comment with full timestamps for last week's Proctor stream if any of you want to check out topics without having to wade through the ranting.
Hi,
@The Proctor ! Arizonian gun nerd here!
Yeah, ammo naming conventions make no sense. I was thinking "if you're doing metric, you say the individual numbers; if you're doing caliber, you say the whole thing," but that's actually still (partially) wrong. Maybe general rule?
So, for example, when we talk about the .22 Long Rifle cartridge, people will just say "Twenty-Two." .45 ACP is "Forty-Five." .38 Special is "Thirty-Eight Special." This applies to also things like .32 ACP and .25 ACP. However, when talking about .357 Magnum, we'll say "Three Fifty-Seven Magnum" and
not "Three Hundred and Fifty Seven Magnum." With .300 Blackout we'll say "Three Hundred Blackout." With a .410 we'll say "Four-Ten." With a .380 ACP we'll say "Three Eighty."
So you may be thinking: okay, if there are two digits, we say it normally; if there are three digits, we single out the first digit and say the rest normally, unless they're all zeros, right? Well, we then have the case of the non-military version of the 5.56 NATO cartridge, which is the .223, which we say "Two Two Three." You also have the case of the non-military version of the 7.62 NATO cartridge, the .308, which we say "Three Oh Eight." Then you also have the case of the .30-06 cartridge, which we say "Thirty Aught Six."
So all the calibers seem to have a general rule with some exceptions. What about metric?
There, it seems a lot more standardized, but certain naming conventions are applied depending on bullet diameter or case length.
So for the 5.56 NATO, we'll say "Five Five Six." However, the 5.56 NATO's full name is the 5.56x45mm NATO. Here, we say "Five Five Six By Forty-Five." With the standard AK round, which is 7.62x39, we say "Seven Six Two By Thirty-Nine." This would be another way to separate it from the 7.62 NATO round, which, we could say "Seven Six Two NEIGH-TOE," or we could say "Seven Six Two By Fifty-One," as the case length is 51mm. The common 9mm Parabellum round is usually just called a "Nine" or a "Nine Millimeter," however its full designation is 9x19mm Parabellum, which you would say as "Nine By Nineteen Parabellum," or simply just "Nine By Nineteen."
There are some other cases, like the Russian 7.62x54mmR round, which is an old full-powered, rimmed (that's what the R is for) cartridge (rimmed but not rimmed fired, a notable difference) still in use today. People will simply call it the "Fifty-Four Rimmed."
There are quite possibly other exceptions, but there's a whole lot of cartridges out there. A general rule is if the round is described in metric, you'll likely say each number of the bullet diameter individually, until you get to the teens
that are not in the decimal places, then you'll say "Ten Millimeter" or "Eleven Millimeter" or "Twenty Millimeter". If it's in caliber, you'll likely say it as a whole
if it's two digits. If it's three digits, you'll likely say the first digit individually, with the next two together, unless there's a zero after the first digit - and if it's just two zeros, you'll say it from the hundreds place altogether. Something like the .223 ("Two Two Three") is an oddity.
Hope this helps
further break your mind!