You can do it by specifing a class for the column:
An example of class declaration:
The class should implement the \Magento\Ui\Component\Listing\Columns\ColumnInterface
The \Magento\Ui\Component\Listing\Columns\ColumnInterface inherits from the \Magento\Framework\View\Element\UiComponentInterface, which has the getName() method:
By default the \Magento\Ui\Component\Listing\Columns\ColumnInterface is implemented by the ancestors of the \Magento\Ui\Component\Listing\Columns\Column class
It has the following getName() method implementation:
So it just returns a value of the name attribute, for example:
If you create a custom getName() method implementation, you will get a custom name for a backend grid column.