R make.unique starting in 0

Question

[bhbh]

I have a data frame with columns that are in groups of 4 like so:

us.sample4, us.sample4, us.sample4, us.sample4, nz.sample3,nz.sample3, ch.sample4, ....

I would like to get:

us.sample4.0, us.sample4.1, us.sample4.2, nz.sample3.0 ,nz.sample3.1, ch.sample4.0

Is there an easy way to accomplish this? In the make.unique documentation does not mention any parameters to obtain this behaviour.

[Asaf]

I guess you can run make.uniqe and then change the labels that weren't changed by make.unique and add .0 to them.

[bhbh]

yes, but the problem is that some numbers has already exist after sample names