Dutch Americans (locative). Similarities between Dutch and English are abundant. Examples include the article "the" ("de" in Dutch), the words "book" ("boek"), "house" ("huis"), "pen" ("pen"), and, "street" ("straat"), among others. Dutch and English are both part of the West Germanic language group and share several aspects. Adaptation of place names between the languages is common, as was the case of New York, where several landmarks like "Conyne Eylandt" (Rabbit Island) became more suitable to Anglophones (Coney Island). Contact between other languages also created various creoles with Dutch as the base language. Two examples, Jersey Dutch and Mohawk Dutch, are now extinct.
Rockville Centre, New York May 1645 following the devastation of Indian communities by Dutch soldiers. Violent expropriation dislocated them with the arrival of additional Dutch and English settlers. The hamlet was named "Rockville Centre" in 1849, after local Methodist preacher and community leader Mordecai "Rock" Smith. It was incorporated as a village in 1893. Rockville Centre emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as a commuter community connected to New York by the Long Island Rail Road. In 1915, the "New York Tribune" went so far as to declare that Rockville Centre was a place in which "the average mortal could live