Letter D: Where Is It From?
Name The club obtained its name from the USSR sports society Dynamo. The team played for the society for precisely sixty years all the way into 1989 when the club with the same name was founded. While discussing the name for the future leading club, the employee of the Moscow Dynamo factory L. Nedolya-Honcharenko from Ukraine offered the name should include energy, power and spirit (Dynamo means “power” in Greek) in itself. His idea was backed, with writer Maksim Gorkiy describing it later on as “Dynamo is power in motion”. The phrase was used as a catchword for quite a spell.
Colors The white and blue colors were officially set up on October 8, 1924 and the first emblem contained 11 sports regalia including a soccer ball.
Emblem The huge and cumbersome emblem was soon replaced with a new one depicting the capital uppercase letter D in a rhombus. The emblem is to be seen on the footballers’ shirts in the team’s first known photo.
The emblem went through some slight changes when a small red star appeared in a top corner. However, this was not the case with the uniform. The shirts had solely a letter D on them, either in a rhombus or without it. Also, the emblem found its place on a traditional white and blue team flag.
Another sports “reform” came in 1957 and brought about regional (in each Soviet republic) sports societies, which began to enjoy more independence. The Ukrainian Dynamo Council took time with the new emblem. It was introduced no sooner than in the late 70’s. The traditional letter D was preserved, just this time on the Soviet Ukraine flag, which bore the legend “USSR”.
The issue of restyling the emblem arose in the year 1989, when the football club was established. The competition for the best emblem was staged in search of something unique. A lot of bright ideas were received and then used in the club merchandise.
With Ukraine gaining its independence in 1991, the squad’s uniform became yellow-blue and remained so until 2002. The yellow color, however, is still to be found on the emblem.
Further improvements were added in 1996 when the Dynamo management put the year 1927 (the date of the club foundation) on to a since then round emblem.
Thus, the FC Dynamo Kyiv has changed 6 emblems over the eighty years since its establishment. The other ones that are to be met on souvenir merchandise are not official.
Pennant The history of the Dynamo pennant is far shorter. Although the tradition of exchanging pennants before games was practiced worldwide, it did not enjoy support in the USSR for a lengthy spell. In the absence of the production base and stable dyes, only first hand-made goods are preserved. Not surprisingly, silk hand-embroidered pennants of those days now remain a sheer rarity.
Just recently, a private Lviv cooperative has launched the production of simple souvenir pennants, with the time moving on to manufacturing high-quality pennants for matches of any kind. Now that the club can as well order pennants abroad, the problem is resolved.
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