Glock Naming Convention?

[Vygur]

Do Glocks have a naming convention? Like why is it Glock 17, 22, etc? I know 17 is generally 9mm and 22 .40

 

[Slavex]

17 was because that's how many rounds it held, after that it all went to ####.

 

[Vygur]

So pretty much it's now "hey guy's what number do you feel like using today?"

 

[peckerwood]

Yeah...like the next one in production gets the next number in the list. Check the dates when these guns were released for sale to the public and you will see the trend.

 

[Rod B]

The Glock 17 was named such as it was the 17th patent awarded to Gaston Glock.
The fact that it had a 17 round capacity was incidental.

 

[ace_himself]

They're just named in the order of their patents.

 

[Vygur]

Ahhhh ok makes sense.

 

[Slavex]

hey look at that, I learned something new. but if it's patents, then what did he patent for the 22? 23, 26 etc?

 

[Dragoon]

The Glock 17 was indeed Gaston Glock's 17th patent. However, from there I think the new models were just numbered sequentially as they came out.....and the convention evolved over time. Notice how there's no such thing as a Glock 23L? It's called a Glock 24 instead .

 

[Vygur]

So I am guessing it's mostly theory and no hard evidence then on why the naming convention?

 

[BattleRife]

So I am guessing it's mostly theory and no hard evidence then on why the naming convention?

Yep.

The reason for the 17 is fairly well known, though as often as not people cite the mag capacity.

The sequential numbering was fairly obvious. Each new model was numbered one higher than the last. Of that I am sure, at least up to the 23, which was when I stopped caring.

 

[cybershooters]

I asked Robert Glock once, he said they just started numbering them sequentially after the Glock 18. I'm not sure why that was relevant, probably the patent numbers as stated previously.

I had an ancient Glock brochure once (first one they ever did), and it was something like "ideal for police, sport and military" and the idea was the Glock 17 was for the police, the 17L was for sport and the 18 was for military use.

But hey, we could always just give them our own names... hmm... can you guess which models I'm talking about...

"The original"

"The smaller than the original one"

"The one that goes b-b-b-b-bang"

"The one that Americans wanted that is too big for anyone's hands"

"The long one"

"The slightly shorter than the long one so it would fit in the IPSC box"

"The chopped one that is still too big to fit in anyone's hand"

"The thinner chopped one that we finally perfected"

"The one with the bigger hole in the barrel that we copied off S&W"

"The one with the even bigger hole in the barrel that everyone is still wondering why we made it"

"The one that we copied off SIG Arms"

"The one we made because Clinton banned large capacity magazines"

Etc.

 

[beltfed]

and the idea was the Glock 17 was for the police, the 17L was for sport and the 18 was for military use.

...except that their first pistol contract was for the Austrian Army for 5000 Glock 17s.

 

[ilovepotatos]

Cybershooters, you should write a humor column on guns somehow...good stuff!

 

[cybershooters]

...except that their first pistol contract was for the Austrian Army for 5000 Glock 17s.

Oh yes, but I got the impression their original marketing was well, feeble, to put it simply. They didn't actually have much until around 1989. Thanks to the "plastic gun" scare.

 

[aiwa]

"The one with the even bigger hole in the barrel that everyone is still wondering why we made it"

How would that looked stamped into the slide? They might need to go to a smaller font.