Edward Wheeler, a former Mayor of Ossining, doesn't think the name change is ''going to make a bit of difference,'' as far as the village is concerned.

''No one here ever stopped calling it Sing Sing,'' said Mr. Wheeler, who owns a stationery store on Main Street. ''The people here aren't as disturbed by the prison as some may think.''

The relationship between the village and the prison, though uneasy in decades past, has improved in recent years, residents said. Inmates from the prison have worked on two community projects, painting a church and doing some cement work at the Ossining Volunteer Ambulance Corps.

The Village Board recently expressed an interest in expanding the community service program, to have inmates work on projects that would not interfere with work done by local unions. ''But, no, prisoners do not walk up and down the streets with the rest of the villagers,'' said Roberta Arminio, president of the Ossining Historical Society, shooting down what she described as one of the ''wild rumors'' circulating outside town.

''And the lights inside homes here did not go dim when there was an execution at the prison,'' she said. ''That's another outside rumor.''

Sing Sing took in its first inmates in 1828, when 150 convicts were shipped down the Hudson River by barge from upstate Auburn Prison. The name Sing Sing comes from an Indian tribe named Sint Sincks, meaning ''stone upon stone.'' The site was chosen because of the village's large marble quarry. The name Ossining is derived from Sing Sing.

Years later, when criminals were sent ''up the river'' from New York City they went to Sing Sing, which was also known as the Big House and the Bastille on the Hudson. The facility is 30 miles from New York City in Westchester County.