Named after West 8th Street and the New York Aquarium in Coney Island.
The aquarium was founded in 1896 at Castle Garden in Battery Park, Manhattan. The city closed it there in late 1941, after Robert Moses announced that Castle Garden would be demolished during work on the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel, and it reopened in Coney Island on 6 June 1957. The station was first identified as Coney Island–West Eighth Street.