I'm not trying to ask a stupid question. Recently I saw .44 S&W Special advertised by Blazer. Is this just a case of .44 Special having a different moniker (Sort of like .380 ACP and 9mm short, 9mm Kurtz)?

Or is this a slightly different type of ammo?

If it says .44 S&W, DO NOT use .44 Mag. You will wind up eating part of your revolver. The other way around, no problem. I shoot .44 Remington from my .44 Mag Ruger all day and save the (over $!.00 per round) Mags for when they are needed.

Yes they are one in the same. CCI makes aluminum cased 44 Special ammo.

Yep, same. Gun and ammo makers sometimes use the official designation and sometimes the shorted name. .44 S&W Special vs. .44 Special, .41 Remington Magnum vs. .41 Magnum, .38 S&W Special vs. .38 Special. Same-o, same-o.

There are a number of cartridges whose original designation included (and sometimes still does) the name of the company that developed them but is often dropped today, and the .44 Special is one of these. Smith & Wesson developed the .44 S&W Special by lengthening the .44 Russian case, and renaming it to include the S&W name, which is rarely used today. Subsequently, Remington worked with S&W to develop the .44 Magnum by lengthening the .44 Special case, and so the full original name of the .44 Magnum cartridge is .44 Remington Magnum, again often shortened to just .44 Magnum.

It's much the same story with the .38 Special, almost never referred to (except on S&W barrels, where it creates confusion for some with the different .38 S&W cartridge) by its original name of .38 S&W Special, the .357 S&W Magnum, and the .357 Remington Maximum, the latter of course never achieving the popularity of the .38 Special and .357 Magnum.

The situation with the .380 ACP is a bit different, because those alternate names are the European designations, i.e., 9mm Kurz (German for "short"), or 9mm Corto (Italian for "short"), along with some others that don't include the word for "short."

ETA: I see that BUFF provided much of this info while I was typing.

Some manufacturers don't like to put their competitors name on their guns.

Thanks everyone. Have a .44 Magnum and a .357 Magnum so I know of you have a revolver built for specials not to put magnum loads. (If the cylinder even would close with the longer cartridges)

I've just never heard of .44 Smith & Wesson Specials before. I was concerned it was a round like a .38 S&W, which is not the same as .38 Specials.

Far better to ask than to have a problem.....

.38 short colt, .38 long colt, .38 s&w, .38 s&w special, .38 new colt police, .38 super, 38-40.....
Only two of those are the same, and the rest shouldn't be interchanged.
Yes, good to be cautious.

[QUOTE=Leftofcentre67;139204440]I'm not trying to ask a stupid question.

It would have been stupid if you'd have tried to do something stupid with said gun and ammo.Asking for info is the intelligent thing to do.After all,all of us are ignorants.....luckily,we don't all ignore the same thing!
Qc

This is NOT a stupid question. You know that some ammo goes with a certain gun BUT not with another. And making the wrong move can be disasterous. I'm glad you checked.

__________________
Marc
Retired USAF