Renaming the FleetCenter is sure to come when the merger between the two banks is complete.

BOSTON (AP) – The Fleet name is everywhere around here: from the home of the Boston Celtics and Boston Bruins to a golf tournament, charitable events, a waterfront concert pavilion and the paychecks of 47,700 bank employees.

Soon, though, the name that represented the last of the big Boston-based banks will be history as FleetBoston Financial is swallowed by Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America in a $47 billion merger announced Monday.

Fleet chairman and CEO Chad Gifford vowed employment levels would remain the same and that charitable giving would continue locally as the bank moves its headquarters out of the Northeast.

But some say the loss of an institution, whose local roots date to the 1700s, goes deeper than just wondering what to rename the FleetCenter.

“I see this as one of a series of what I would regard as unfortunate movements of what had been essentially home-based and home-owned corporations now becoming either nationalized or internationalized,” said Thomas O’Connor, a historian at Boston College.

News of the merger comes just one month after another Boston financial services company – John Hancock Financial Services – was bought by Toronto-based Manulife in a $10.4 billion deal. And it follows other venerable Boston-area companies – The Boston Globe, Shawmut Bank, Filene’s Basement, for example – either moving control out of the area or being merged into another company.

“I’m disturbed because it seems to me you’re taking out of Boston a great many of the kind of corporate leaders who in the past – and I’m talking way back to the 19th century – were largely responsible for recreating and maintaining and supervising some of the great cultural and humanitarian institutions in this city,” O’Connor said.

Lee R. Forker Jr., president of New England Research and Management Inc., a Boston investment firm, called it a “sad day.”

“What … kind of financial capital is this going to be if all the powers-that-be report to Charlotte, N.C.?” he said. “Give me a break.”

Fleet’s roots go back centuries to when Boston banks financed the young nation’s shipping and textile industries. In 1784, then known as the Massachusetts Bank, it became the first federally chartered bank in the United States.

Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, the bank – which adopted the Fleet name in 1982 – grew to be one of the largest banks in the nation and the largest in New England.

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino said he’s concerned about what the merger will mean for jobs and charities that have for years relied on Fleet’s generosity. He did not learn of the merger until he picked up his morning paper Monday.

“I hope that under the merged entity that Bank of America takes up the same responsibility that Fleet has had over the years, the charitable giving to the involvement in sports to the pavilion on the waterfront,” the mayor said.

Menino said he expected to meet soon with Bank of America officials to have the merger and its repercussions fully explained. Until then, he was not ready to take officials at their word that jobs and charities would not be hurt.

“In their word they say we’re committed to the city, we’re committed to the charitable giving, we’re committed to maintaining the employment levels,” Menino said. “But the final analysis is what’s in the real delivery of goods.”

Kenneth D. Lewis, chairman and CEO of Bank of America, said charitable donations will not drop. “They will not go down. Chad and I will be very disappointed if they don’t grow.”

Daniel Forte, president of the Massachusetts Bankers Association, said he was not concerned about the merger’s effect on Massachusetts consumers or charities.

“We hate losing the largest independent-owned bank here in Massachusetts,” he said. “But there have been other cities – L.A., Philadelphia – that are in similar situation. I think the entering players in those markets have been good corporate citizens.”

The most prominent public display of the Fleet name – other than on its thousands of ATMs – is on the FleetCenter, which was built in 1995 to replace the Boston Garden as the home to the NBA’s Celtics and NHL’s Bruins.

At a Boston news conference, Lewis said he wanted the name changed.

“I’d love for it to be the Bank of America Center,” he said.

AP-ES-10-27-03 1805EST