[pmoriarty]

Check out renameutils[1], which has the advantage over vidir of doing sanity checks before renaming.

Also, this can be done in emacs using wdired.

[1] - http://www.nongnu.org/renameutils/

[brobdingnagians]

The ranger file manager also has this built in.

[RMPR]

Was about to point this out, but it's good to know if you ssh in a box which doesn't have Python installed.

Edit: Or use a more portable terminal FM, nnn pops to my mind

[nieve]

MMV is reasonably powerful, but straightforward, can produce & consume rename listings, and is included in a lot of distros.: https://git.deb.at/w/pkg/mmv.git