Rename Error in dplyr: Names must be Unique

Question

Despite having unique names, dplyr::rename breaks and gives "Error: Names must be unique." I know I could opt to rename in other methods such as the following:

rename <- function(dat, oldnames, newnames) 
{  datnames <- colnames(dat)
   datnames[which(datnames %in% oldnames)] <- newnames
   colnames(dat) <- datnames
   dat
 }

Here is my code:

df1 <- dplyr::rename(df,
  "Language1"="Language",
  "RESPAge"="Age...31",
  "ADMIN1Name"="ADM1_NAME",
  "RESPSex"="Gender...42",
  "HHSize"="RspIsHoH",
  "HWaterSRC"="WaterSource",
  "NoteFCS"="Note FCS",
  "FCSStap"="Staples",
  "FCSPulse"="Pulses",
  "FCSDairy"="Dairy",
  "FCSPr"="Proteins",
  "FCSVeg"="Veg",
  "FCSFruit"="Fruits",
  "FCSFat"="Fats",
  "FCSSugar"="Sugars",
  "noterCSI"="note_Rcsi",
  "rCSILessQlty"="LessExpensiveFood",
  "rCSIBorrow"="BorrowOrHelp",
  "rCSIMealSize"="LimitPortionSize",
  "rCSIMealNb"="ReduceNumMeals",
  "rCSIMealAdult"="RestrictConsumption")

But I want to use dplyr for this. I thought it was a conflict because of other loaded packages and tried only loading readxl(for reading data) and dplyr but it didn't change the result.

Answer 1

The data frame had a column (index) with no header that caused the code to break. Dropping the column solved the challenge.