What do you mean by an "alias" field? Can you provide a screenshot?

Thanks David. I have been able to rename the attributes using the AttributeRenamer transformer in FME but ideally I would like to import the attributes directly from an ESRI shapefile using the alias field (screen shot attached)

@kirsten I think the alias option is only available in an ESRI Geodatabase, not in shapefiles.

This tutorial may be of some help: https://knowledge.safe.com/articles/22423/working-with-geodatabase-field-aliases.html

Alias is also available using shapes. (I often do this, when I'm too lazy to reprocess the data...). Mostly when creating map-books with queries and map-queries for output.

But you can't access it trough a shape reader because afaik it is not information in the shape file but in the mxd.

So as per @cartoscro hint, you'll need to save the data into a geodatabase wich would make it accessible trough the gdb reader.