Changing Column Names

We can use colnames() to change column names.

Suppose we have the following dataset

##### Creating Sample Data #####
Name <- as.character(c("Abbey", "Brian", "Connie", "Dan", "Ethan"))
GPA <- c(3.0, 2.8, 2.1, 4.0, NA)
Grade <- c(3, 4, NA, NA, 6)
State <- c("AL", NA, NA, NA, "CA")

data <- data.frame(Name, GPA, Grade, State, stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

data

##### Creating Sample Data #####

Name <- as.character(c("Abbey", "Brian", "Connie", "Dan", "Ethan"))

GPA <- c(3.0, 2.8, 2.1, 4.0, NA)

Grade <- c(3, 4, NA, NA, 6)

State <- c("AL", NA, NA, NA, "CA")

data <- data.frame(Name, GPA, Grade, State, stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

data

> data
    Name GPA Grade State
1  Abbey 3.0     3    AL
2  Brian 2.8     4  <NA>
3 Connie 2.1    NA  <NA>
4    Dan 4.0    NA  <NA>
5  Ethan  NA     6    CA

> data

Name GPA Grade State

1 Abbey 3.0 3 AL

2 Brian 2.8 4 <NA>

3 Connie 2.1 NA <NA>

4 Dan 4.0 NA <NA>

5 Ethan NA 6 CA

For whatever reason, we want to change the column names to a, b, c, and d. There are many ways to accomplish the task.Using mutate() to create new variables works. But using colnames() is way easier.

#### Colnames() #####
colnames(data) <- c('x','b','a','d')

data

#### Colnames() #####

colnames(data) <- c('x','b','a','d')