Change geom_text's default "a" legend to label string itself : <p>Similarly to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18337653/remove-a-from-legend-when-using-aesthetics-and-geom-text">this question</a>, I want to change the default "a" in the legend, but rather than removing it completely, I want to replace it with the labels themselves. That is, the first line of the legend should have a colored icon labeled "se" with the full name "setosa" on the right.  </p>

<pre><code>iris$abbrev = substr( iris$Species, 1, 2 )

ggplot(data = iris, aes(x = Sepal.Length, y=Sepal.Width, shape =
Species, colour = Species)) +  geom_text(aes(label = abbrev))
</code></pre>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Jgde.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Jgde.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
