Renaming the latest commit can be as easy as git commit --amend -m "new message". Note that this generates a new commit hash.
Here, the current commit message is add notes.
$ git show --stat
commit 1c38c9ac39f31e9a50d7c19349d1abd6cb47fb15
Author: <redacted>
Date: <redacted>
add notes
metadata | 1 +
notes | 1 +
2 files changed, 2 insertions(+)Notice that after the amend, it does not modify the commit in-place; it creates a new one and replaces the commit it amended.
$ git commit --amend -m "add notes and metadata"
[main 326a18c] add notes and metadata
Date: <redacted>
2 files changed, 2 insertions(+)
create mode 100644 metadata
create mode 100644 notes
$ git show --stat
commit 326a18ccaf5f20f2bebbb62ccbe11da2a99b9686
Author: <redacted>
Date: <redacted>
add notes and metadata
metadata | 1 +
notes | 1 +
2 files changed, 2 insertions(+)