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“Are you saying that the US military has used a purely semi auto AR design?...”

I beg forgiveness for lack of clarity.

I failed to state explicitly, that there are three systems of nomenclature involved here:

1. Official US DoD nomenclature

2. In-house nomenclature set by the manufacturer

3. Nomenclature determined by the marketing department, used in sales literature and by distributors and other commercial entities

They don’t all match.

“AR” was an acronym created by the original ArmaLite firm and - with a number added - referred to specific firearm models. Supposedly, it meant “ArmaLite Rifle,” which was imprecise from the outset because the firm developed several smoothbores and combination arms, not strictly rifled arms. They used it in the public nomenclature for the AR-10 (7.62 NATO) and for their downsized rifle of similar design in 22 centerfire chamberings, the AR-15 (to the best of my knowledge). Both were select-fire.

Official US DoD nomenclature of the WWII period through the end of the 1960s used several letter designations: M for officially approved models formally adopted for issue to troops; T for test items; X for experimental items. There may have been others. I’ve not seen every last piece of documentation on the nomenclature system. It did at times lead to lengthy, involved designations like T44E4 (or 5?), and XM16E1 (best recollection) which became the M14 and M16A1.

Nominally, the US Army Ordnance establishment set all the nomenclature rules, ever since they became the executive agent for small arms circa 1903 - a milestone that may have meant less than modern civilians believe, as each armed service retained the right to buy weapons for its own purposes direct from private-party gunmakers, and to name those arms according to its own rules for internal administrative and logistic activities. Thus, the “M1911 US Army” and the “M1911 US Navy” pistols.

Nomenclature within the Ordnance establishment was not always clear nor consistent. We have the “US Revolver M1917” made by Smith & Wesson, and the “US Revolver M1917” made by Colt’s. They were totally different designs except for the chambering (45 ACP) and required completely different repair systems and spare parts. The Ordnance establishment itself was guilty of adding to the confusion: In the panicked days following the US declaration of war against the Central Powers in April 1917, famed designer John M Browning presented two arms he’d developed and shelved years earlier: his belt-fed, water-cooled machine gun chambered in 30-06, and his select-fire rifle in the same caliber. Ordnance officials decided to name the first “M1917 Machine Gun” and the second, “M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle” - to avoid confusion. Or so I’ve read in several secondary sources.

Internal nomenclature established by the manufacturer (”factory nomenclature”) does not always match advertising or general-public naming. Some firms never divulge it; in the case of damage to records or a firm going defunct, it is sometimes lost for good. Colt’s used letter designations for many handguns, by frame size: E, F, G, I, K, L, M, N, O, P have been used for arms dating back to the 1850s, and both revolvers and semi-auto pistols. They have also used four-digit numbers in reference to variants of their (semi only) AR-15.

Advertising and “generally known as” nomenclature can be something else entirely. The confusion is helped along by gunwriters, and a spottily informed consumer public. Much gun-magazine usage breezily refers to Colt’s best-known military semi-auto pistol as the “M1911”; this refers only to arms made under contract to the military and delivered. While Colt’s used the (then quite momentous) adoption by the War Dept as a marketing tool, it never named its pistol that until recently. Colt’s has called it the “Government Model” for many decades. In house, it’s the O Frame.

In the early 1960s, Colt’s acquired exclusive production rights and trade-name rights to ArmaLite’s 22 centerfire military rifle. Over a very confused period of several years, it contracted to provide USAF a substantial number of select-fire rifles, but the US Army put a halt to deliveries, at the same time it induced Colt’s to develop modified versions for ground-force use. Several accounts have been published in secondary scholarly works and do not all agree. USAF had to endure a delay, but it eventually received its rifles - named M16 to the best of my knowledge - and US Army Ordance eventually adopted a modified version of the original as US Rifle, M16A1.

In the mid-1960s, Colt’s began offering a semi-only version of the ArmaLite design, calling it the AR-15. Not even collector books get all of it right: on page 269 of _Colt: An American Legend/The Official History of Colt Firearms from 1836 to the Present_ by R L Wilson (New York: Abbeville Press, 1985; ISBN 0-89659-953-1), there is a photo of a semi-only rifle of civilian pattern. It has the forward-assist plunger of the M16A1 but no auto sear and no hole for the pivot pin; also, no raised rib around the magazine release button. The caption declares it to be an M-16.

Some observers might argue for a fourth and a fifth category to the numbered list of nomenclature subtypes: gun magazine nomenclature, and collector nomenclature. Cutting it short is simpler: gunwriters are notoriously mixed up and error-prone (so are their editors); why encourage them?

Collectors might be assumed to harbor better intentions (emphasis on “might”), but can get it wrong: for decades, collectors referred to Colt’s five-shot pocket revolver of 36 caliber as the Model 1853. In its day, it was the 1862 Pocket, also “Pocket Model of Navy Caliber” to distinguish it from other pocket revolvers Colt’s made, most of which were 31 caliber.

There were two AR-15 designations at least, for the downsized 22 centerfire rifle that descended from the AR-10: the select-fire military version, and the semi-only version made by Colt’s for sale to the civilian populace. The later branched off from the former - not the other way around.