In 1862, the Board of Commissioners of Central Park, then still under construction, decided to name the park's 18 entrances after some of the diverse characteristics of the city's citizens. So it came to be that the entryways were given names like Artisans', Engineers', Farmers', Hunters' and Mariners'.

But the entrances were never labeled. While official maps dutifully took note of the names, New Yorkers would eventually come to refer to the entrances by the adjacent streets.

Today, that will officially change, when the city and the Central Park Conservancy, the private group that manages the park, unveil letters chiseled tastefully into the stone walls. Unlike all the other recent physical restorations in the park, this one revives an idea that was never carried out, although the names are in many cases decidedly anachronistic now.

''It will add new historic charm,'' said Sara Cedar Miller, the park's official historian.

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers -- who, as the first administrator of Central Park, led the rescue of a park that had badly deteriorated by the early 1980's -- said naming things was a passion of the Victorians who created the park. She also noted that signs had grown in importance in today's world.