diff --git a/R/pkg/R/DataFrame.R b/R/pkg/R/DataFrame.R
index cc4cfa3423ced9837462f08693fb3279891a551f..e33d0d8e29d49c996892cc2a1ff8759a01e92629 100644
--- a/R/pkg/R/DataFrame.R
+++ b/R/pkg/R/DataFrame.R
@@ -280,7 +280,7 @@ setMethod("dtypes",
 
 #' Column Names of SparkDataFrame
 #'
-#' Return all column names as a list.
+#' Return a vector of column names.
 #'
 #' @param x a SparkDataFrame.
 #'
@@ -338,7 +338,7 @@ setMethod("colnames",
           })
 
 #' @param value a character vector. Must have the same length as the number
-#'              of columns in the SparkDataFrame.
+#'              of columns to be renamed.
 #' @rdname columns
 #' @aliases colnames<-,SparkDataFrame-method
 #' @name colnames<-
diff --git a/R/pkg/inst/tests/testthat/test_sparkSQL.R b/R/pkg/inst/tests/testthat/test_sparkSQL.R
index ce0f5a198a25940b1d97c33134e77aff44b6825c..1dd8c5ce6cb3230a2b8e7c9bff85711f5c5bfd05 100644
--- a/R/pkg/inst/tests/testthat/test_sparkSQL.R
+++ b/R/pkg/inst/tests/testthat/test_sparkSQL.R
@@ -898,6 +898,12 @@ test_that("names() colnames() set the column names", {
   expect_equal(names(z)[3], "c")
   names(z)[3] <- "c2"
   expect_equal(names(z)[3], "c2")
+
+  # Test subset assignment
+  colnames(df)[1] <- "col5"
+  expect_equal(colnames(df)[1], "col5")
+  names(df)[2] <- "col6"
+  expect_equal(names(df)[2], "col6")
 })
 
 test_that("head() and first() return the correct data", {