Title: Rename Column Headers In Pandas
Slug: pandas_rename_column_headers
Summary: Rename Column Headers In Pandas
Date: 2016-06-17 12:00
Category: Python
Tags: Data Wrangling Authors: Chris Albon

Originally from rgalbo on StackOverflow.

Preliminaries



In [34]:

    
# Import required modules
import pandas as pd

Create example data



In [35]:

    
# Create a values as dictionary of lists
raw_data = {'0': ['first_name', 'Molly', 'Tina', 'Jake', 'Amy'], 
        '1': ['last_name', 'Jacobson', 'Ali', 'Milner', 'Cooze'], 
        '2': ['age', 52, 36, 24, 73], 
        '3': ['preTestScore', 24, 31, 2, 3]}

# Create a dataframe
df = pd.DataFrame(raw_data)

# View a dataframe
df









    Out[35]:






  
    
      
      0
      1
      2
      3
    
  
  
    
      0
      first_name
      last_name
      age
      preTestScore
    
    
      1
      Molly
      Jacobson
      52
      24
    
    
      2
      Tina
      Ali
      36
      31
    
    
      3
      Jake
      Milner
      24
      2
    
    
      4
      Amy
      Cooze
      73
      3

Replace the header value with the first row's values



In [36]:

    
# Create a new variable called 'header' from the first row of the dataset
header = df.iloc[0]









    Out[36]:





0      first_name
1       last_name
2             age
3    preTestScore
Name: 0, dtype: object



In [37]:

    
# Replace the dataframe with a new one which does not contain the first row
df = df[1:]



In [38]:

    
# Rename the dataframe's column values with the header variable
df.rename(columns = header)









    Out[38]:






  
    
      
      first_name
      last_name
      age
      preTestScore
    
  
  
    
      1
      Molly
      Jacobson
      52
      24
    
    
      2
      Tina
      Ali
      36
      31
    
    
      3
      Jake
      Milner
      24
      2
    
    
      4
      Amy
      Cooze
      73
      3

	0	1	2	3
0	first_name	last_name	age	preTestScore
1	Molly	Jacobson	52	24
2	Tina	Ali	36	31
3	Jake	Milner	24	2
4	Amy	Cooze	73	3