Good question. The only funnel cakes I’ve ever seen are called that because a steady stream of batter is dripped into the oil from the bottom of a funnel. It’s basically a monotone Jackson Pollack painting in fried dough.
I am confused. The difference between fried dough and funnel cake here (New Hampshire) is whether it’s a solid blob or basically a string of fried dough. Both are yummy and fried while you wait.
An elephant ear isn’t something we buy at the fair (unless, I guess, there’s a few at a bake-sale type booth) and it’s made of a baked, flakey puff pastry as **MrDibble **stated, already cooked long before you see it, and room temperature. You pick up an elephant ear in the pastry case where you get muffins or donuts before work, not at fairs.
Yeah, that’s definitely a different version of “elephant ear” than I’m accustomed to. Here it’s definitely not puff pastry and definitely fried to order (or at least should be.)
I noticed those when doing an image search earlier for “elephant ears.” It seems there are at least two different pastries with that name: one the deep fried carnival food that I’m familiar with, and the other something that looks more like a pastry I’d find at a Viennese cafe.
How are they after you wait? 
Can’t tell. Taste buds burned off.
I love elephant ears. Funnel cakes are too greasy, in my experience with them. They are not similar. Elephant ears are stretchy and doughy. Funnel cakes are much more tender, with small pieces you pull off.
Both were sold at Ohio fairs, along with sugar waffles, which are delicious for ten seconds and then fairly sickening. 
Oh, and at the local fair of my childhood, you could get elephant ears with apple or cherry topping (like pie filling). But they always came coated in cinnamon and sugar.
Funnel cake really ups the crunch factor with all those edges made by funneling the batter. We don’t have elephant ears here in street fairs but we do have zepoles. Or is that zepolies? Elephant ears sound like flattened versions of zeps.
O.K., after checking to see how it is actually spelled, zeppole (yeah, should have done that first), I see that there are many varieties. The one commonly served here in NY street fairs is a plain fried dough ball, put hot in a paper bag with a fistful of powdered sugar. Shake and eat.
I can see there being multiple things called “elephant ears”, because it’s a natural-enough name to give to anything big and flat (see also the large plant leaves mentioned by kayaker). But “funnel cake” refers to a very specific way of making them, so something either is or is not a funnel cake.