Does changing a django models related_name attribute require a south migration?

The above accepted answer is now outdated.

Django does create and alter field foreign_key_field on model migration when the related name of a foreign key field changes.

No You do not need a migration.

Related name is the name to use for the relation from the related object back to this one (the reverse relationship).

related_name has nothing to do with the database. It is consumed by the Django's ORM to fetch queryset results, so you dont need a migration if you change the related_name attribute on a models' field.

Some additional documentation here on the usage of related_name