I may have a solution for you if you need to rename lots of field names.
My problem was a slightly different in that I wanted to change a field name with a "period" to an "underscore", since Adobe seems to struggle to do 'simplified field notation' calculations with fields that were named with a period, but not with an underscore.
so if i tried to do box.1 - box.2, nothing happened, but when renamed to box_1 and box_2, now the formula box_1 - box_2 in 'simplified field notation' works fine.
For some reason when you create multiple text boxes (such as when you right click on one field and then do 'create multiple copies..') it renames each one with a period, so if your first field is named "box", and you create 2 copies, it will rename them "box.1" and "box.2".
On windows, ctrl+J to open the javascript console, clear the console and paste this into the console, (the box one at the bottom). Do ctrl+A to select all of the script that you just pasted, and then ctrl+enter to execute it. It should rename the fields to "box_1" and "box_2" and so on. Hope this can help someone.
Script:
// Loop backwards so that removal doesn't affect the loop indices
for (var i = this.numFields - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
var origName = this.getNthFieldName(i);
if (origName.indexOf('.') !== -1) {
var newName = origName.replace(/\./g, '_'); // Replace all periods with underscores
// Get the original field
var origField = this.getField(origName);
if (!origField) continue; // safety check
// Create a new field with the same type, page, and rectangle
// Note: You may need to adjust parameters depending on your field type.
var newField = this.addField(newName, origField.type, origField.page, origField.rect);
// Copy basic properties. You may want to copy additional properties as needed.
newField.value = origField.value;
newField.defaultValue = origField.defaultValue;
newField.textSize = origField.textSize;
newField.multiline = origField.multiline;
newField.alignment = origField.alignment;
newField.readonly = origField.readonly;
// Copy any additional properties if needed:
// newField.font = origField.font; etc.
// Remove the original field
this.removeField(origName);
console.println("Renamed field '" + origName + "' to '" + newName + "'");
}
}