Deleting categories and subcategories

Hello all,

I have a strange issue which goes as follows:

I am trying to get rid of some of my categories and subcategories in an effort to cleanup a blog (but keeping the posts).

I know that when by default wordpress moves my deleted post to the Misc/uncategorized category (the default category we get at installation time).

However, I renamed that category in order to have it for daily use.

Now, when I delete categories, wordpress tells me that by default it will assign posts in the deleted category to that Misc/uncategorized category (that one I renamed)

Here comes the issue: actually WordPress doesn’t assign them to any category at all! I’m guessing it must be because I renamed it, although it sounds silly to assign posts to a category by name instead of by id or something (so that the reference is kept).

Anyone had this problem before? Is there a workaround? Also, is there a way to bulk reassign posts? (this would be much more helpful).