conuly

On names.

Hello, My Name Was ____________
By ART SEGAL

My name is Arpard Herschel Fazakas -- or at least it was until last year, when, at age 51, I changed it. I wanted a name that everyone could say and spell on the first try, not to mention one that wasn't awkward and embarrassing for me. I thought my life would become easier as a result.

When I was a boy, I dreaded the first day of school. I always knew when the teacher reached me on the list because she would begin to stammer. The other kids would turn in their seats, wondering who the weirdo was. When I turned 18, even though my father and my grandfather were both named Arpard, I felt I had suffered enough, and I began to use Art instead. It was much harder finding the nerve to shed my real albatross, Fazakas.

There seem to be at least 45 ways to spell Fazakas and even more ways to say it. I've been wrestling with it for half a century: Fanagas, Fazalcas, Pazakas, Razakas, Sayakas, Schzartis, Sozakas and Tzakas. (These are documented spellings in correspondence from the likes of Waldenbooks, All World Travel and the New York Zoological Society.) In Hungarian, Fazakas sounds like ''fuzzy-kosh'' or ''fuzza-kesh.''

I tried being proud of my name, but it's hard when it's being dismembered. ''My name is Arpard Fazakas, an elegant Old World name,'' I'd sometimes say at an office or when I called toll-free to check my Visa account. ''Arpard is the anglicized form of Arpad, from ninth-century Hungary. But since it's so ethnic, I call myself Art. Then of course there's my last name. Let me spell it for you.''

Last year, in a now-or-never moment, I realized that I was at risk of remaining Arpard Fazakas for life. It was time for action.

I had thought about replacements for years. I considered Herschel (my middle name), Faz (the shortened form used by my uncle and grandfather), Potter (''fazekas'' in Hungarian), Cunningham (my ex-wife's name), McMillan (just because I liked it) and even Arpard (my original first name, which would make me Art Arpard). I settled on Art Siegel in honor of my mother's maiden name.

At the district courthouse, I picked up the Name Change Procedure sheet. Then, the night before my court appearance, a friend said I was about to become the only American in history who intentionally changed his name to one that sounded more, not less, Jewish. ''Segal is better than Siegel,'' he said. ''Less ethnic.'' So I decided I'd switch. (This would later send shock waves throughout the Siegel clan. Had I flipped at last?)

The next day, during my lunch break, I walked the four blocks to the district court building. My only hurdle now was a possible refusal by the judge. ''Ar/ar . . . paard? Am I saying it right?'' the judge said. I replied, ''That's correct, your honor.'' She said: ''I'm afraid I'll mutilate your last name. It starts with F.'' I said, ''Yes, that's me, your honor.'' She asked me why I wanted to make the change. I explained. ''I see,'' she said. ''And do you solemnly swear that this change, if approved, will harm no one and cause no one to forfeit any funds receivable?'' ''Yes, your honor.'' ''Well, then,'' she said, ''does anyone in this courtroom object to this request?'' Silence. Bang! She slammed her gavel on the desk. ''Pick up your order in Room 902,'' she said. ''Next.'' Pursuant to King County District Court Order No.Y4-NC149, I was now Art Herschel Segal. At first I wanted to call everyone I knew to spread the word! Yet when I returned to the office, I hesitated to tell even my manager and supervisor.

I'm getting used to Art Segal, but over the past year I've had doubts about the wisdom of changing my legal name. I feel a sense of loss over my previous identity. When referring to past achievements, I find myself saying things like, ''In 1987, when I was known as Art Fazakas. . . . '' But there is no Art Fazakas now; there's only Art Segal (probably thousands of them). I worry about the way others perceive me. Sometimes, when I've explained my reasons to people, the reply is less than flattering: ''You went to all that trouble?''

I miss Art Fazakas. I miss being Art Fazakas. But now that all my records have been changed -- Social Security, the I.R.S., current and past employers, subscriptions, health-insurance policies and my retirement account -- now that I've just about straightened out the misunderstandings the change has caused, do I really want to undo it? Go through the entire process again and end up with the very name I always wanted to relinquish?

Recently, to my own surprise, I have started to sign my name Faz. . . . My sneaking sense is that Segal is not really me, and that I might indeed want to change my name back. ''Just do it,'' my friends say. ''Be proud of Fazakas.'' But I hesitate. Was it all an experiment? Should I admit my error and, with my tail between my legs, reclaim Fazakas? Or should I remain Art Segal for life? All I know is that Arpard Fazakas is not quite ready to admit defeat.

On "settling in"

Unsettling In
By ERICA REX

THEIR voices wake me from sleep. Although it is the middle of the night, light from the street has bathed my room in hazy half dawn, so at first I am disoriented, unclear of where I am, or who or what is causing the racket. For a moment, I think I'm still in North Fork, the town in the Sierra Nevada foothills in California I left three months before with both my 10-year marriage and my writing career in shambles. But at this moment I am unsure of where I am. I imagine a clear night under a full moon, and there's a raccoon in the yellow pine outside the window snarling at some foe. Maybe a bear has come down from the high country in search of food. It has been a dry year, and forage is scarce. Then the voices from outside the window jolt me awake.

Male voices are cussing in high decibels. Profanities roll off their tongues as easily as nursery rhymes lilt from the mouths of preschoolers. Their conversation would have earned any child in North Fork a long trip to the woodshed.

Laughter. Hawking, spitting. Cigarette smoke wafts into my room. It is night, late spring, and the air in Brooklyn already feels hot and still, foreign and oppressive. I am actually sleeping naked, which ordinarily I never do. In the heat and humidity, I can't tolerate the feeling of a nightgown against my skin. Music from a bar across the street twaddles out plaintively like a lost child. I live on the ground floor of a prewar brick building in Bay Ridge. A group of teenage boys are leaning against the wall of my building beside my window, smoking and shooting the breeze. I turn on the light beside my bed, thinking that perhaps if they know I'm here, awake, and listening, they will go away. They don't budge.

The clock beside my bed reads 2:30. There are more exclamations; someone begins recounting a tall tale about scoring. I'm not sure whether he means drugs, sex or basketball.

I have lived in this apartment in Brooklyn only a few months. Since I didn't know better when I rented it from a long distance away, while I was still in California, I had no idea of how far Bay Ridge was from Manhattan, at least as far as public transportation was concerned. "It's on the R train," the young woman I rented it from said cheerfully over the phone. "The R is only three blocks from the apartment. Very convenient."

The R train, I quickly learned, is anything but convenient. The station is close enough, but the subway has a life of its own. The R train, which takes over an hour to actually deliver me to any Manhattan destination, if it comes at all, has become one of the major preoccupations of my new life. Subways in general, I discovered, are a kind of force of nature in the city. They are to New York what the weather was back home. People here discuss trains and the vicissitudes of trains more than any other topic, including politics and unemployment.

Will the train be on time? How much time should I allow to get someplace I haven't been before? Will I be able to transfer to the express at Atlantic Avenue without having to wait another hour?

Then there are the unexpected stoppages. And to make public transportation really challenging, there are night and weekend schedules involving route switches and track changes, the likes of which only a select few with special powers of divination can interpret.

As a result, living in Bay Ridge does me about as much good in terms of engaging myself with the cultural life of the city as living in North Fork, which is an entire continent away. At this moment, however, the train is not my problem. I get out of bed, put on my robe, and walk toward the window. I clear my throat a few times to signify my approach, then pull open the blind. In the woods, nights are silent except for the occasional owl's hoot, or coyotes barking and yipping to one another across the ridge. In the woods, a small amount of noise and light will generally drive away loitering wildlife. In Bay Ridge, this is not the case: New Yorkers are so accustomed to noise and light, I wonder sometimes how they would function without it.

A group of young men, perhaps five or six, dressed in baggy pants slung so low over their hips I can see a pierced navel or two, are standing nearby. Some are leaning against the building, some against street lamps. Their heads are covered with what looks like knotted ends of black pantyhose. Their lips and noses are decorated with multiple piercings. They wear high-top tennis shoes and socks; T-shirts embossed with logos and emblems denoting mysterious alliances, although I can't begin to guess what they might be. One of the boys notices me, and their voices gradually quaver into silence. One spits into the gutter and looks the other way, down the street toward the water.

"UM," I say, "boys, would you, um, mind moving across the street? You see, my bedroom is right here, and I'm trying to sleep." One of them starts to say something; another cuts him off.

"We didn't realize you were there, ma'am," the second one says. He is a tall, dark, heavyset youth of about 16. His black stocking cap is knotted at the crown like a little nylon beanie. "We'll be going. Sorry to disturb you."

Casually, the others begin to move as well. They pull themselves away from the wall slowly, as though they were made of taffy and the heat was gluing their backs to the brick. They move off down the street toward Shore Road, lumbering slowly, casually, like bears in the high country, confident in the knowledge that no matter what they do, or what incursions into their territory they might tolerate, they still own the place. They may cede ground now and then, but me, I'm just renting.

On an astronomer of sorts

From a Corner on Ninth Street, He Can Lasso the Moon
By CAROLINE H. DWORIN

PEOPLE have a tendency to look back at their childhoods, at the neighborhoods where they grew up, and see magic. "You can never go home again," they say, or, "Back when I was a kid, it was all different around here." The truth is that it wasn't any different, not any more than it was different when their parents were children, or their grandparents. I'm sure Chief Sitting Bull sat down one day and said to his progeny, "You know, this neighborhood's really changed a lot since I was your age."

Recently, on my way home to my apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the man with the telescope was back on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Ninth Street. It was his first appearance of the year; the first warm night. Each year beginning in spring, he stands on the corner from early evening until late at night with a tremendous telescope, a tripod and an encyclopedic knowledge of astronomy (compared with the star-struck neophyte, at least).

He lets any passer-by who wishes look through his lens into the sky, and sometimes a little line of entranced and curious locals forms: a couple in their 20's, lost in a soundless, silent gaze; a man with a briefcase and a purple Uncle Louie G's Italian ice, waiting his turn with the quiet resignation of a commuter.

The telescope man, also known as Joe Delfausse, will point out Saturn and show you the rings around the planet, or what the stars look like on a perfectly cloudless night. He is a marvel, a wonder, a dreamer. He is someone who children will think of years later when they sigh with fondness and say, "It was beautiful here back then."

The man with the telescope is as dependable in his sporadic appearance as the rotation of planetary alignments, of celestial phenomena, of heavenly drift. And if you should round a corner and come upon him, you'll see something on the faces of those gathered around him that is unexpectedly ethereal. With mouths ever so slightly ajar, those 50-hour-a-week faces will bear the quizzical expression of those struck with the rediscovery of wonder, and their eyes will shine with an almost mystical light.

This night, I was particularly exhausted and overburdened with work and hunger and everything that makes a young person feel old. And although I slowed down near the telescope, for the first time ever, I didn't stop. As I walked away, the telescope man turned to look at me and called out, "Don't you want to see the moons of Saturn?" And I stopped myself, with all my bags and hassles, and thought, "Whatever would become of someone who they said no to that?"