COMPAT-18589: Supporting axis in Series.rename (pandas-dev#18923)

doc/source/whatsnew/v0.23.0.txt

@@ -841,6 +841,7 @@ Reshaping
 - Bug in :func:`concat` when concatting sparse and dense series it returns only a ``SparseDataFrame``. Should be a ``DataFrame``. (:issue:`18914`, :issue:`18686`, and :issue:`16874`)
 - Improved error message for :func:`DataFrame.merge` when there is no common merge key (:issue:`19427`)
 - Bug in :func:`DataFrame.join` which does an *outer* instead of a *left* join when being called with multiple DataFrames and some have non-unique indices (:issue:`19624`)
+- :func:`Series.rename` now accepts ``axis`` as a kwarg (:issue:`18589`)
 
 Other
 ^^^^^

pandas/core/generic.py

@@ -863,6 +863,9 @@ def rename(self, *args, **kwargs):
         copy = kwargs.pop('copy', True)
         inplace = kwargs.pop('inplace', False)
         level = kwargs.pop('level', None)
+        axis = kwargs.pop('axis', None)
+        if axis is not None:
+            axis = self._get_axis_number(axis)
 
         if kwargs:
             raise TypeError('rename() got an unexpected keyword '

pandas/tests/series/test_alter_axes.py

@@ -81,6 +81,14 @@ def test_rename_set_name_inplace(self):
             exp = np.array(['a', 'b', 'c'], dtype=np.object_)
             tm.assert_numpy_array_equal(s.index.values, exp)
 
+    def test_rename_axis_supported(self):
+        # Supporting axis for compatibility, detailed in GH-18589
+        s = Series(range(5))
+        s.rename({}, axis=0)
+        s.rename({}, axis='index')
+        with tm.assert_raises_regex(ValueError, 'No axis named 5'):
+            s.rename({}, axis=5)
+
     def test_set_name_attribute(self):
         s = Series([1, 2, 3])
         s2 = Series([1, 2, 3], name='bar')