“Groot” is also the Dutch cognate to the English word “great”.
There are plenty of Dutch words and names that are close enough to English to sound really funny to English-speakers. Like, Vroom is a real Dutch surname, but to American kids that’s the sound a cool car makes.
(In one of the Baroque Cycle books, Neal Stephenson needed a name for a Dutch shipwright who built really fast sailing ships. Who else could it be but Jan Vroom?)