Coney Island Name History

For those who missed the discussion on how Coney Island got its name:

The name
Coney Island, c. 1914, by Edward Henry Potthast

Native American inhabitants, the Lenape, called the island Narrioch[citation needed] (land without shadows), because, as is true of other south shore Long Island beaches, its compass orientation keeps the beach area in sunlight all day.[citation needed] The Dutch name for the island was Conyne Eylandt (Konijnen Eiland in modern Dutch spelling),[2] meaning Rabbit Island. This name is found on the New Netherland map of 1639 by Johannes Vingboon. (New York State and New York City were originally a Dutch colony and settlement, named Nieuw Nederlandt and Nieuw Amsterdam.) As on other Long Island barrier islands, Coney Island had many and diverse rabbits and rabbit hunting prospered until resort development eliminated their habitat.

It is generally accepted by scholars[3][4] that Coney Island is an English adaptation of the Dutch name, Konijnen Eiland. Coney is also an obsolete and dialectal English word for rabbit. Coney came into the English language through Old French (Conil), which derives from the Latin word for rabbit, cuniculus. The English name "Conney Isle" was used on maps as early as 1690,[5] and by 1733 the modern spelling "Coney Island" was used.[6] J.F.W. des Barre's chart of New York harbor in the Atlantic Neptune, 1779,[7] and John Eddy map of 1811 both use the modern "Coney Island" spelling.[8]

Even though the history of Coney Island's name and its Anglicization can be traced through historical maps spanning the 17th century to the present,[9] and all the names translate to "Rabbit Island" in modern English, there are still those who contend that the name derives from other sources. Some say that early English settlers named it Coney Island after its cone-like hills. Others claim that an Irish captain named Peter O'Connor had, in the 1700s, named Coney Island after an island (Inishmulclohy) in County Sligo, Ireland. Yet another purported origin is from the name of the Indian tribe (the Konoh tribe) who supposedly once inhabited it. A further claim is that the island is named after Henry Hudson's "right-hand-man" John Coleman, supposed to have been slain by Indians.[10]

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coney_island