{"id":7237,"date":"2018-10-01T21:40:12","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T21:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.datanovia.com\/en\/?post_type=dt_lessons&#038;p=7237"},"modified":"2018-10-19T07:22:01","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T05:22:01","slug":"rename-data-frame-columns-in-r","status":"publish","type":"dt_lessons","link":"https:\/\/www.datanovia.com\/en\/lessons\/rename-data-frame-columns-in-r\/","title":{"rendered":"Rename Data Frame Columns in R"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"rdoc\">\n<p>In this tutorial, you will learn how to <strong>rename<\/strong> the columns of a <strong>data frame<\/strong> in <strong>R<\/strong>.This can be done easily using the function <strong>rename<\/strong>() [dplyr package]. It\u2019s also possible to use R base functions, but they require more typing.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.datanovia.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/dn-tutorials\/data-manipulation-in-r\/images\/rename-columns-data-frame-r.png\" alt=\"Renaming Columns of a Data Table in R\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Contents:<\/p>\n<div id=\"TOC\">\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"#required-packages\">Required packages<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#demo-dataset\">Demo dataset<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#renaming-columns-with-dplyrrename\">Renaming columns with dplyr::rename()<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#renaming-columns-with-r-base-functions\">Renaming columns with R base functions<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#summary\">Summary<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"required-packages\" class=\"section level2\">\n<h2>Required packages<\/h2>\n<p>Load the <code>tidyverse<\/code> packages, which include <code>dplyr<\/code>:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"r\"><code>library(tidyverse)<\/code><\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"demo-dataset\" class=\"section level2\">\n<h2>Demo dataset<\/h2>\n<p>We\u2019ll use the R built-in iris data set, which we start by converting into a tibble data frame (tbl_df) for easier data analysis.<\/p>\n<pre class=\"r\"><code>my_data &lt;- as_tibble(iris)\r\nmy_data<\/code><\/pre>\n<pre><code>## # A tibble: 150 x 5\r\n##   Sepal.Length Sepal.Width Petal.Length Petal.Width Species\r\n##          &lt;dbl&gt;       &lt;dbl&gt;        &lt;dbl&gt;       &lt;dbl&gt; &lt;fct&gt;  \r\n## 1          5.1         3.5          1.4         0.2 setosa \r\n## 2          4.9         3            1.4         0.2 setosa \r\n## 3          4.7         3.2          1.3         0.2 setosa \r\n## 4          4.6         3.1          1.5         0.2 setosa \r\n## 5          5           3.6          1.4         0.2 setosa \r\n## 6          5.4         3.9          1.7         0.4 setosa \r\n## # ... with 144 more rows<\/code><\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"renaming-columns-with-dplyrrename\" class=\"section level2\">\n<h2>Renaming columns with dplyr::rename()<\/h2>\n<p>Rename the column Sepal.Length to sepal_length and Sepal.Width to sepal_width:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"r\"><code>my_data %&gt;% \r\n  rename(\r\n    sepal_length = Sepal.Length,\r\n    sepal_width = Sepal.Width\r\n    )<\/code><\/pre>\n<pre><code>## # A tibble: 150 x 5\r\n##   sepal_length sepal_width Petal.Length Petal.Width Species\r\n##          &lt;dbl&gt;       &lt;dbl&gt;        &lt;dbl&gt;       &lt;dbl&gt; &lt;fct&gt;  \r\n## 1          5.1         3.5          1.4         0.2 setosa \r\n## 2          4.9         3            1.4         0.2 setosa \r\n## 3          4.7         3.2          1.3         0.2 setosa \r\n## 4          4.6         3.1          1.5         0.2 setosa \r\n## 5          5           3.6          1.4         0.2 setosa \r\n## 6          5.4         3.9          1.7         0.4 setosa \r\n## # ... with 144 more rows<\/code><\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"renaming-columns-with-r-base-functions\" class=\"section level2\">\n<h2>Renaming columns with R base functions<\/h2>\n<p>To rename the column Sepal.Length to sepal_length, the procedure is as follow:<\/p>\n<ol style=\"list-style-type: decimal;\">\n<li>Get column names using the function <strong>names<\/strong>() or <strong>colnames<\/strong>()<\/li>\n<li>Change column names where name = Sepal.Length<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<pre class=\"r\"><code># get column names\r\ncolnames(my_data)<\/code><\/pre>\n<pre><code>## [1] \"Sepal.Length\" \"Sepal.Width\"  \"Petal.Length\" \"Petal.Width\" \r\n## [5] \"Species\"<\/code><\/pre>\n<pre class=\"r\"><code># Rename column where names is \"Sepal.Length\"\r\nnames(my_data)[names(my_data) == \"Sepal.Length\"] &lt;- \"sepal_length\"\r\nnames(my_data)[names(my_data) == \"Sepal.Width\"] &lt;- \"sepal_width\"\r\nmy_data<\/code><\/pre>\n<pre><code>## # A tibble: 150 x 5\r\n##   sepal_length sepal_width Petal.Length Petal.Width Species\r\n##          &lt;dbl&gt;       &lt;dbl&gt;        &lt;dbl&gt;       &lt;dbl&gt; &lt;fct&gt;  \r\n## 1          5.1         3.5          1.4         0.2 setosa \r\n## 2          4.9         3            1.4         0.2 setosa \r\n## 3          4.7         3.2          1.3         0.2 setosa \r\n## 4          4.6         3.1          1.5         0.2 setosa \r\n## 5          5           3.6          1.4         0.2 setosa \r\n## 6          5.4         3.9          1.7         0.4 setosa \r\n## # ... with 144 more rows<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>It\u2019s also possible to rename by index in names vector as follow:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"r\"><code>names(my_data)[1] &lt;- \"sepal_length\"\r\nnames(my_data)[2] &lt;- \"sepal_width\"<\/code><\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"summary\" class=\"section level2\">\n<h2>Summary<\/h2>\n<p>In this chapter, we describe how to rename data frame columns using the function <strong>rename<\/strong>()[in <strong>dplyr<\/strong> package].<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!--end rdoc--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You will learn how to rename a data frame columns in R.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7726,"parent":0,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","class_list":["post-7237","dt_lessons","type-dt_lessons","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","lesson_complexity-easy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Rename Data Frame Columns in R - Datanovia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.datanovia.com\/en\/lessons\/rename-data-frame-columns-in-r\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Rename Data Frame Columns in R - Datanovia\" 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