Renaming Images Using macOS Finder and Lr (Not LrC)

This answer depends on how you are managing the files with Lightroom: Cloud or Local.

If you are using Lightroom through the Cloud tab (its default cloud-based mode, where you import so that all your images are uploaded to the Lightroom cloud), then it’s game over…renaming in macOS will have zero effect because any files you have on your Mac are not the same files that Lightroom is editing in the cloud, so there is no way a macOS rename of local files can affect the imported originals that are long gone, uploaded to the Lightroom cloud.

If you are using the Local tab in Lightroom, now you have a chance. The Local tab is a simple file browser (like Adobe Bridge), so it simply shows the state of actual folders on your Mac desktop. If you are in the Local tab, go ahead and do any kind of batch renaming or moving you want; Lightroom will keep up with it as it updates its view of Mac folders.

There is, however, one more very important thing about the Local tab: You probably need to rename more than just the image files. In the Local tab, edits are not stored in Lightroom but in “sidecar” files that share the base file name of the image. So if you used Lightroom to edit a file called “IMG_0747.CR3” Lightroom probably created sidecar files such as “IMG_0747.xmp” and (sometimes) “IMG_0747.acr”. Rename all of them consistently. If you don‘t, in other words if sidecar filenames no longer match the filenames of their images, Lightroom will not be able to connect images to their edits, so images will appear in Lightroom as if you never edited them. But if you take care to keep filenames of originals and sidecars consistent, then things will work the way you expect.

Hey, @23233549 Putnam. Welcome to Lightroom Community. I'll help you figure this out. 

Lightroom, by design, creates a copy of your images & uploads them to the cloud. If you rename images locally, it should not affect your Lightroom database on the cloud.