Named after Rockaway Boulevard, the old Rockaway Road.
The boulevard, which meets Woodhaven and Cross Bay Boulevards and Liberty Avenue at the station, was formerly known as Rockaway Road, or Rockaway Plank Road. The name Rockaway may have meant ‘place of sands’ in the Munsee language of the Lenape; early colonists wrote it in forms such as Rechouwakie and Reckowacky.