Coney Island

Freaks and Creeks and Wild Rabbits: How Coney Island Got Its Name

The People’s Playground has assumed a far different identity than its dated name implies, as it was assigned in a time when Coney was still a real island.

Coney Island, bursting with beachgoers in 1939. Photo by Alexander Alland via NYPL

by Hannah Frishberg

03/28/2016 3 minute 0

Brownstoner takes on Brooklyn history in Nabe Names, a series of briefs on the origins and surprising stories of neighborhood nomenclature.

Coney Island is the personification of Brooklyn’s remarkable diversity. The borough’s madness and profound acceptance of the elsewhere unwelcome is put up for display at the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, on the boardwalk, piers, beach, and throughout the park’s animated booths and rides.

The landmarked, nearly century-old Wonder Wheel and Cyclone rollercoaster are not for the faint of heart; their colorful cars creak ominously as they swing and plummet with the vivacity of amusement park rides a fifth their age. Dedicated to the entertainment of New Yorkers young and old, Coney Island lives to relieve urban stress, and there is nowhere else in the Tri-State area, likely the world, quite like it.

Formerly a barrier island, Coney and other south Brooklyn neighborhoods were once only accessible at low tide, due to their being divided from the mainland by Coney Island Creek. Over the course of the area’s transformation into a summer resort and subsequent development, though, landowners and the city began filling in the waterway’s middle, until the island was one with the mainland.

As for the “Coney,” its origins are contested, but the most popular theory sites the Dutch word “konijn” for rabbit, in reference to the former island’s large wild rabbit population.