How Coney Island got its name remains a mystery, though people have found explanations from almost every stage of its history.
A written record came out in 1924. It says that the island was once the home of the Konoh people. The name Konoh was mispronounced and finally became “Coney.”
Another explanation finds the name connected with the arrival of Henry Hudson in New York Harbor in 1609. According to it, John Coleman, Hudson’s right-hand man, was killed by Indians. To honor him, people named the island after him.
The Dutch settled in Manhattan in1624, and they became to Coney Island soon afterwards. Since the Dutch word for rabbit (兔子) was konijn and the island had a large population of wild rabbits, many people have supposed this fact to have led to the name. There was a different story about the Dutch word. The Dutch fought the Indians there and were believed to have said that their enemies “ran like rabbits.”
According to an article in a magazine, an Irish captain named Peter O’ Connor sailed between New York and Ireland in the late 1700s, and he named Coney Island after an island that was close to his home in Ireland and of the same size as the American island.
Unfortunately, there is little evidence (证据) that the Dutch, or the English after them, used any word “Coney” for several centuries. There is a lot of evidence, however, that the name Coney Island came into use in the first half the 19th century, after a ferry (渡船) service to carry passengers from the island to the mainland.
【題組】54. According to the passenger, the name Coney______.
(A) was mispronounced by the Konoh Coleman
(B) was given by a man called John Coleman
(C) comes from an island close to the English coast
(D) is close in pronunciation to a Dutch word
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