When querying an eloquent model, you can alias / change the name of the selected column before returning it to the front-end. To do so you can make use of the "as" keyword within the "select" method.
$user = User::select(['id', 'name as nickname'])->first();
The query above will get the first user and the only column that will be retrieved is the "nickname".
If you are joining a table then make sure to use the "." dot syntax to specify which of the table column you are referring to.
Post::join('comments', 'posts.id', '=', 'comments.id')
->select('comments.title as subject')
->get();
