You can rename a brand in your Gumshoe project using the Competitive Leaderboard and the "Custom" option. See this article for details: What to Do if Your Brand Is Misidentified or Misnamed
Is this the same as merging brand aliases?
No. Use Customize when one brand is showing under the wrong name. Use Brand aliases when the same brand appears as more than one entry, for example, a root domain and a subpage URL, and you want to merge them into a single brand. See also: How do I merge a brand that appears more than once in the Competitive Leaderboard?