He published his first papers under the name Đuro Daničić in 1845, after the heroic Senj Uskok from a folk poem, and a name that he continued to use throughout the rest of his life.

Under the influence of Vuk Karadžić and Franz Miklosich, he started studying Slavic philology, to which he subsequently devoted his entire career.

[1] Daničić played a key role of laying the foundation of Serbian philology, grammar, historical dictionary and dialectology on the basis of principles set by Vuk Karadžić.

Daničić started scientific work as supporter of Karadžić's ideas of linguistic pan-Serbism (attribution of Shtokavian dialect and written heritage to Serbian ethnos).

That included linguistic unity of Croats and Serbs and the opinion that the Croatian literature is at the same time Serbian and vice versa.