r - Changing column names of a data frame

There are a couple options with dplyr::rename() and dplyr::select():

library(dplyr)
mtcars %>%
  tibble::rownames_to_column('car_model') %>%                            # convert rowname to a column. tibble must be installed.
  select(car_model, est_mpg = mpg, horse_power = hp, everything()) %>%   # rename specific columns and reorder
  rename(weight = wt, cylinders = cyl) %>%                               # another option for renaming specific columns that keeps everything by default
  head(2)
      car_model est_mpg horse_power cylinders disp drat weight  qsec vs am gear carb
1     Mazda RX4      21         110         6  160  3.9  2.620 16.46  0  1    4    4
2 Mazda RX4 Wag      21         110         6  160  3.9  2.875 17.02  0  1    4    4

There are also three scoped variants of dplyr::rename(): dplyr::rename_all() for all column names, dplyr::rename_if() for conditionally targeting column names, and dplyr::rename_at() for select named columns. The following example replaces spaces and periods with an underscore and converts everything to lower case:

iris %>%
  rename_all(~gsub("\\s+|\\.", "_", .)) %>%
  rename_all(tolower) %>%
  head(2)
  sepal_length sepal_width petal_length petal_width species
1          5.1         3.5          1.4         0.2  setosa
2          4.9         3.0          1.4         0.2  setosa

dplyr::select_all() can also be used in a similar way:

iris %>%
  select_all(~gsub("\\s+|\\.", "_", .)) %>%
  select_all(tolower) %>%
  head(2)
  sepal_length sepal_width petal_length petal_width species
1          5.1         3.5          1.4         0.2  setosa
2          4.9         3.0          1.4         0.2  setosa