I did not create the views and they were created via SSMS, so not automatically registered it would seem. These were created by developer who is no longer with us and I'm sure he did not go into the world of GIS and register them. Well as sure as I can get since he was terrified of the idea of needing to use ESRI tools when he was helping me. haha.
I've looked at these links (THANK YOU!) and looked back at the views via Catalog. The option to Register is still clickable, so I'm going to go ahead and assume they are in fact not registered. I will try to verify on an old Test/Dev setup if I can get some time to bring it back to life.
Otherwise, it sounds like renaming temporarily will not corrupt and I can end up with the same old name and full functionality. Yeah? fingers crossed