Look for Crying Child Island in the intracoastal waterway between Jacksonville and the Atlantic Ocean, and you may ask yourself, as I have, what the heck that's supposed to mean. Some internet chatter has ascribed the island's odd name to an old story, as given in a vague explanation by Atlantic Beach city manager Jim Hanson:
"The ominously creepy name comes from a sound, similar to the wailing of a child, that apparently was made by a cougar on the island in the past."
Hmmmmmm. Color me skeptical.
Legends behind place names everywhere, not just Florida, are usually a little too specious fpr my tastes. What usually happens is that a place gets its name in one century, and then the source for its meaning is lost a few generations later, leaving people to just make up their own folklore that sounds good. Still, I hold out hope that somewhere, in some forgotten resource in a neglected part of a dusty library archive, we may yet know the story behind its name.
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