摘要：Changing the name FC ‘Dinamo’ into FC ‘Croatia’, and all the events connected with that change, are linked with political culture. The study of this correspondence included 403 young respondents who, with the help of semantic differential, assessed FC ‘Dinamo’, FC ‘Croatia’, the Croatian national soccer team and the Yugoslav national team. The results show that the connotative meaning of the name ‘Dinamo’ is much closer to the national identification of Croats than the name ‘Croatia’. Thus the accusations that the advocates of the name ‘Dinamo’ are enemies of Croatian independence and the democratic changes have been proved unfounded. Even more unfounded was the way the government treated the issue, which harked back to the treatment of Dinamo supporters at the hands of the former communist Yugoslav regime (they were harassed because of the connotative meaning i.e. national identification). Similarly, in the newly-created Republic of Croatia they were harassed because of the denotative meaning attributed to ‘Dinamo’ (Yugo-communist nostalgia), with which Dinamo fans never identified.
