Avenue M cuts through the old village of South Greenfield, the station’s first name.
Avenue M bisects South Greenfield, an old village of Kings County. The station opened in 1878 as South Greenfield, one of the original stops of the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railroad, and was later called Elm Avenue. The area is now Midwood, from the Middle Dutch Midwout, ‘middle woods’, for the woodland between Bushwick and Brooklyn.