How can I correctly change column names in an R data frame?

General Discussions
, ,
1

I have a data frame in R called newprice, and I want to assign new names to each column individually.

Here’s what it looks like:

newprice Chang. Chang. Chang. 1 100 36 136 2 120 -33 87 3 150 14 164 I’m trying to change column names in R like this:

names(newprice)[1] <- paste("premium")
names(newprice)[2] <- paste("change")
names(newprice)[3] <- paste("newprice")

But I keep getting errors like:

Error: unexpected input in "names(newprice)[1]<-paste(“"
I’ve also tried using c("premium") instead of paste() with no success

. I suspect it might be a syntax issue, but I can’t figure it out.

What’s the correct way to rename columns in an R data frame, and is there any reason paste() would cause this kind of error?

2

Let me help you as I’ve run into this kind of syntax confusion before, especially when column names look repetitive.

The most straightforward way to change column name in R is to assign all of them at once like this:

names(newprice) <- c("premium", "change", "newprice")

This completely avoids any issues with paste() or incorrect quote characters.

I’ve used this countless times when wrangling messy Excel imports with duplicate headers. Super clean.

3

If you want to be a bit more explicit, especially when dealing with data frames with lots of columns, colnames() is a reliable choice. For example:

colnames(newprice)[1] <- "premium"
colnames(newprice)[2] <- "change"
colnames(newprice)[3] <- "newprice"

I prefer this in scripts where I need to change column name in R selectively and it’s clearer to read during code reviews.

Also, avoid using fancy quotes (like “ ”), they’ll trigger that error you’re seeing.

4

If you’re already using the dplyr package (which I highly recommend), you can do this:

library(dplyr)

newprice <- newprice %>%
  rename(
    premium = 1,
    change = 2,
    newprice = 3
  )

This is super readable and works great in pipelines. I often use this approach in my data cleaning workflows, especially when doing multiple renaming steps or integrating with tidyverse tools.