For generations, his name struck fear in Manhattanites’ hearts.

Year in and year out, with fatalistic regularity, envelopes bearing that name would invade the homes of the unwary, the unwilling and the unready.

On each of them, a printed signature loomed sternly over the upper-left-hand corner: “Norman Goodman,” the name appended to the borough’s jury summonses for nearly half a century.

“There are signatures that are more famous,” Mr. Goodman once said. “But mine is notorious.”

Mr. Goodman, who died at 95 on Thursday at his home on the Upper East Side, was for 45 years the clerk of New York County — Manhattan, by any other name. Though the clerk’s office juggles myriad duties, from handling local business filings to operating a passport service, it was as a summoner of jurors that he was most widely, if not most fondly, known.

A lawyer, Mr. Goodman was one of the city’s longest-serving public employees, as redoubtable an institution as the Automat and even more enduring. He held the county clerk’s post, in principle a lifetime appointment, from 1969 until his retirement on Dec. 31, 2014, the day after his 91st birthday. During those years, he issued between 11 million and 12 million jury summonses.