Setting x and y labels with holoviews

You can change the axis labels as or after you plot a figure like this for example

hv.Image(np.random.rand(10,10), kdims=['x','y']).redim.label(x='neXt', y='Ys')

EDIT: In earlier versions of HoloViews you are able to change the axis labels easily like this, check the second answer on Holoviews FAQ

curve = hv.Curve(df, 'x_col', 'y_col')
curve = curve.options(xlabel='X Label', ylabel='Label for Y')

There are indeed dimension aliases in HoloViews, although we should document them better. There are two ways of defining them. You can either supply a tuple of the form (name, label) as a dimension or explicitly declare an Aliases object and supply the attribute. Here is a simple example:

aliases = hv.util.Aliases(x='Some long label')
hv.Image(np.random.rand(10,10), kdims=[aliases.x, ('y', 'Inline label')])

The plotting code will use the long label, and you'll be able to refer to either the name or the label when using the object's methods. You can also supply a tuple to a dimension directly: hv.Dimension(('name', 'label'), range=(0,10)) if you also want to define a range or other Dimension parameter.