How do you remove or change your git user.name from historical github commits?

Question

I am concerned about my privacy and don't want my real name appearing on my github commits. I just discovered that github is saving my user.name as the contributor as well as my github username. I have now changed my local git user.name so future commits will be fine. But now I'm wondering how can I go back and change the user.name that did commits previously in a repo on github?

Answer 1

Besides filter-branch as suggested in a comment, interactive rebase is another option.

Using Interactive Rebase

git rebase -i -p <some HEAD before all of your bad commits>

Then mark all of your bad commits as "edit" in the rebase file. Then, when git asks you to amend each commit, do

 git commit --amend --author "New Author Name <email@address.com>" 

Save and close the editor that opens, and then do

git rebase --continue

to continue the rebase.

Add --no-edit to skip opening the editor so that the command will be:

git commit --amend --author "New Author Name <email@address.com>" --no-edit && \
git rebase --continue

To change both author and committer:

 git -c user.name="New Author Name" -c user.email=email@address.com commit --amend --reset-author