Gondoo U Thein Naing

Thein Naing
Native name	သိန်းနိုင်
Born	(1936-03-02)2 March 1936 Monywa, Burma Province, British India
Died	25 November 2025(2025-11-25) (aged 89) Yangon, Myanmar
Pen name	Gondoo U Thein Naing
Occupation	Author Educator
Alma mater	Mandalay University

Thein Naing (Burmese : သိန်းနိုင်; 2 March 1936 –25 November 2025), also known as Gondoo U Thein Naing (ဂုဏ်ထူးဦးသိန်းနိုင်), was a Burmese writer and educator. Professionally a high school Burmese-language teacher, he also received several National Literature Awards for his works on Burmese dance.

Early life and education

Thein Naing was born on 2 March 1936 in Hsingyun Village, Monywa Township, Sagaing Division, to U Dhana and Daw Aye Sein. ^[1] He passed the matriculation examination in 1955 with a distinction in Burmese—the only candidate to do so that year—and received a gold medal in Burmese from the Monywa District Department of Education. ^[2] The following year, he was awarded The Poet Award by Thein Pe Myint, then-president of Myanmar Writers' Association. He began studying in the Burmese Department at Mandalay University in 1957, where he served as both secretary and president of the university pen club. ^{[3] [4]} During his university years, he won eleven first prizes in literary competitions. ^[5]

Career

After graduating from Mandalay University, Thein Naing was appointed a tutor at the University of Medicine, Mandalay. ^[6] He also served on the executive committee of the Upper Myanmar Writers’ Association, later becoming its vice-president. ^[5]

He resigned from his position as a lecturer at Mandalay Agricultural University and began working as a private Burmese-language tutor in 1968. Between 1972 and 1976, he commuted between Mandalay and Rangoon (now Yangon) to teach, travelling by plane. ^[5]

In 1963, his book The History of Burmese Dance won the third prize at the National Literature Award for Myanmar Culture and Arts. In 1965, his work Burmese Marionette Dance received the second prize in the same category. His 1968 book Explanatory Works on Burmese Language is also regarded as an important reference for Burmese-language teachers and learners. ^[5]

Death

Thein Naing died in Yangon on 25 November 2025, at the age of 89. ^[7]

References

1. "မြန်မာစာဆရာကြီး ဂုဏ်ထူးဦးသိန်းနိုင် အသက် ၈၉ နှစ်အရွယ်တွင် ကွယ်လွန်" (in Burmese). Eleven Media Group Co., Ltd. Retrieved 27 November 2025.
2. "မြန်မာစာဆရာကြီး ဂုဏ်ထူးဦးသိန်းနိုင် ကွယ်လွန်". DVB News . Retrieved 27 November 2025.
3. Moe 2013, p. 862.
4. Moe 2013, p. 867.
5. Oo 2020.
6. Myanmarsar 2019, pp. 10–11.
7. "မြန်မာစာဆရာကြီး ဂုဏ်ထူးဦးသိန်းနိုင်ကွယ်လွန်" (in Burmese). BBC News မြန်မာ. 25 November 2025. Retrieved 27 November 2025.

Bibliography

• Moe, Tin (2013). တင်မိုးကဗျာပေါင်းချုပ်[Tin Moe Poem Collection] (in Burmese). Seikku Cho Cho.
• Myanmarsar, Thein Naing (2019). မြန်မာစာဋီကာ[Explanatory Works on Burmese Language] (in Burmese). Yangon: Shwe Daung Taung.
• Oo, Aung Myint (2020). စာပေပင်လယ်ထဲက ကဗျာလှိုင်းကလေ [The Wave of Poetry in the Sea of Literature] (in Burmese).