<p>There may be more than one way to ask this question, so here's a desciption of the problem. I was working on master and committed some stuff and then decided I wanted to put that work on hold. I backed up a few commits and then branched from before I started my crap work. Practically this works fine, I just now have a different branch as my main development branch. I'm wondering how I could change things around so I'm working on master again but it doesn't have my junk work and said work is on a different branch.</p>

<p>Some ways this could be asked/solved:
How do I rename my master branch to something else and then rename something else to master?
How do I back up master and then cause all commits I've backed up past to be on a different branch?</p>

<p>Thanks for all the (quick) answers! They're all good.</p>

This is relatively easy:
```
```
git checkout -b fake_master master # fake_master now points to the same commit as master
git branch -D master               # get rid of incorrect master
git checkout -b master real_master # master now points to your actual master
git checkout master                # optional -- switch on to your master branch
```
```