Rename multiple dataframe columns, referenced by current names

Question

I want to rename some random columns of a large data frame and I want to use the current column names, not the indexes. Column indexes might change if I add

Answer 1

names(mydf) <- sub("MyName\\.1", "MyNewName", names(mydf))

This would generalize better to a multiple-name-change strategy if you put a stem as a pattern to be replaced using gsub instead of sub.