I always enjoy the NY Times‘ Metropolitan Diary section (little tales of city life sent in by readers), and today there was one that made my linguistic antennae vibrate:
Dear Diary:
My daughter returned home to New York from college in Michigan for summer break. Her three roommates came along for a weeklong stay.
Sitting around the kitchen table one morning, they were eagerly planning things to do in the city. They mentioned a nightclub.
“There’s a really good diner around the corner for afterward,” I said.
Marisa, born and raised in Michigan, looked confused.
“Diner?” she said. “What do you mean ‘diner?’”
“Huh?” I replied. “What do you mean?”
“What’s a diner?”
“What?”
Marisa’s eyes darted around to the other Michigan girls. They also looked confused.
I was confused too.
“It’s a casual restaurant, open 24 hours,” I said. “You can get breakfast any time, burgers, fries. You sit in a booth.”
“Oh,” Marisa said. “You mean a Coney Island.”
“What?” I said.
“Yeah,” Marisa said. “In Michigan, we call those Coney Islands.”
“Why?!”
“I don’t know. That’s just what they’re called.”
This annoyed me. You can’t just name stuff in other states after our New York City icons without our New York City permission, right? I mean, who approved this?
I needed to get to the bottom of this ridiculousness, and I learned that, yes, diners in Michigan are called Coney Islands.
Apparently, Greek immigrants who came through Ellis Island on their way to Michigan sampled Coney Island hot dogs and liked them so much they named the restaurants they eventually opened after them: Lafayette Coney Island, Jackson Coney Island, American Coney Island and on and on, all over Michigan.
These hard-working immigrants were paying homage to our famous hot dogs. There’s no boardwalk, no ocean, no roller coasters — just a lot of love for a Brooklyn icon.
— Darlene Rodriguez
I’m rarely astonished by regional usage, but this example caused me as much bouleversement as it did Ms. Rodriguez. It makes sense when you learn its origin, and I’m glad to know about it, but it was a shock.
Separately, it was a shock when I looked up Italian taccuino ‘notebook’ (because I ran across a link to the long-gone but still lamented, by me at least, Taccuino di traduzione) and discovered it was from Arabic تَقْوِيم taqwīm ‘calendar.’ Never would have guessed — that -ino looks so native!
I’m less struck by Michigan calling them “Coney Islands” than by the college student not recognising “diner”. Even if she had never been out of state, she is likely have heard the word on a TV show or the online equivalent. But it’s easy to overlook something you weren’t looking for and didn’t know existed.
I’ve been living in Michigan nearly 40 years now, and this is not quite right. “Coney Island” is a common term in Detroit and SE Michigan (not so much, I think, elsewhere in the state), but it references a particular sort of greasy spoon, featuring coney dogs (hot dogs with chili, raw onion and mustard). We also have restaurants that call themselves “diners,” if the names of the Fleetwood Diner and Bell’s Diner here in Ann Arbor, or Norm’s Diner in Detroit, provide any evidence. Norm’s Diner, in its website, includes this disclaimer: “warning! this is not a coney”
Thanks for those clarifications! So it’s even more striking that the college students didn’t recognize the word.
Yeah. Diners are where reporters from The New York Times regularly go to understand Trump voters.
(It hasn’t worked in 10 years, but never mind.)
My first stop after coming to the United States was New York, which included a visit to Coney Island. I didn’t know the word “rollercoaster”, and for a long time afterwards I had the idea that “cyclone” was the term for it.
My guess is Rodriguez is allowing herself a bit of artistic license by reporting that an entire room of ordinary Michiganders had no awareness of the word diner. Most likely she used the word without sufficient clarification, and interpreted the subsequent squinting of eyes by a room of women who weren’t quite sure what sort of restaurant she meant to take them to as total incomprehension. I would have the same reaction as those women, though. Many people point to something unrecognizable to me and call it a diner. There is a place in a town I used to live that calls itself a diner because of its 50s-chic decor, but it doesn’t serve breakfast and it’s not open late!
Based on Jon W’s report that diners are widespread even in the limited area where “coney island” is used, I’m wondering whether the correspondent fictionalized this a bit. Or whether the college students were playing it up. After all, these are stories sent in by readers, not by reporters with editors asking questions.
when visiting detroit, i’ve heard “coney island” used for what Jon W called a “coney dog” as well as for the places where you buy one, and i’m wondering which direction the synechdoche/metonymy flowed.
Yeah. Diners are where reporters from The New York Times regularly go …
Yeah. Diners are in every movie set in the grubbier parts of the US. Whether or not there’s a local word (or a word for a local variant), how dare they not know ‘diner’?
Are there still pockets of the US with milkbars? with soda fountains?
Even I knew “diner”, and I’m really not very American at all.
In Paper Moon, somewhere in the Dust Bowl, Ryan O’Neal tells Tatum to eat her Coney Island. My memory was that it was an ice-cream sundae but further research proves it was indeed hot-dog-adjacent. Perhaps I saw the movie in low-res VHS.
I had always heard the *hot dog itself* referred to as a Coney Island, so much so that you can be sure if you see that word in the a Detroit area, hot dogs are the specialty.
My guess is Rodriguez is allowing herself a bit of artistic license by reporting that an entire room of ordinary Michiganders had no awareness of the word diner. Most likely she used the word without sufficient clarification, and interpreted the subsequent squinting of eyes by a room of women who weren’t quite sure what sort of restaurant she meant to take them to as total incomprehension.
That makes a lot of sense.
Coney’s (the hot dogs) are one of the traditional ways of serving Cincinnati chili.
What’s good for the coney is good for the gander?