TheSu is short for "Thesis Support" — a contraction of the two core concepts the schema models. 'Thesis' refers to any declarative statement (a claim or assertion), while 'support' refers to the discursive elements that employ or target theses (arguments, explanations, elaborations). Put them together, and you get TheSu: a system for mapping how ideas relate to their surrounding discourse.
The name came naturally during development — it described exactly what the schema does. But as it turns out, this simple abbreviation carries some rather interesting baggage.
All pronunciations are welcome — there is no wrong way to say TheSu.
The creator, Daniele Morrone, (mis)pronounces it /θˈɛsu/ (roughly "THEH-su"). Why the unusual vowel? The schema was first developed in Italian, where "tesi" (thesis) has an open "e" sound — nothing like the English "thee-sis". That vowel stuck, even when the name became an English abbreviation.
More intuitive alternatives: /θˈiːsu/ ("THEE-su") follows English pronunciation conventions, while /θiːˈsu/ ("thee-SU") stresses the combination of "Thesis" and "Support". Really, anything goes.
But if you do pronounce it the creator's way, something curious happens — you get surprisingly close to an ancient Egyptian word...
While researching possible names, a consultation of E. A. Wallis Budge's An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary (1920) revealed a serendipitous coincidence. On page 860, using Budge's now-obsolete transliteration system, the sequence "thesu" is associated with hieroglyphs and meanings now linked to the root more properly transliterated as ṯꜣz — a word with meanings remarkably fitting for the project.
Modern Egyptological pronunciation differs a bit from the Italianised reading /θˈɛsu/. As Egyptologist Stefan Baumann clarified, ṯꜣz would be pronounced closer to "tjes". But the final "u" is not entirely out of place: it anticipates the grammatical ending .w found in the derived form ṯꜣz.w ("commander", see below) or in plurals, often rendered as "u" in earlier transliterations. The name was chosen for "Thesis Support", yet its orthographic twin in ancient Egyptian offers a rich symbolic framework.
The ancient Egyptian root ṯꜣz carries three interrelated meanings — each resonating with what TheSu XML does:
As a noun, ṯꜣz means "saying", "utterance", or "phrase" — forms of linguistic expression attested from the Old Kingdom through the Ptolemaic period. TheSu XML structures discourse by capturing exactly these: declarative statements, arguments, and explanations as formal units.
As a verb, ṯꜣz means "to tie", "to join", "to attach" — creating connections and binding things together. TheSu XML does exactly this: it ties theses to their supports and joins propositions across sources, forming networks of interconnected claims.
The derived form ṯꜣz.w denotes a "commander" — one who directs and orchestrates. TheSu XML serves as the orchestrator of network structures, directing how theses, supports, and propositions are organised and related.
Together, these meanings form a fitting metaphor: TheSu XML is the "commander" that organises "sayings" by "tying" them into structured networks.
The Egyptian meanings are attested in the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (TLA), the authoritative database for ancient Egyptian vocabulary maintained by the Berlin-Brandenburg and Saxon Academies of Sciences. Key entries: Lemma 176860 (saying), Lemma 176800 (to tie), Lemma 856104 (knot).
The initial discovery came from E. A. Wallis Budge's An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary (1920), Volume 2, page 860, which uses an obsolete transliteration system rendering ṯꜣz as "thesu". Standard reference works include Erman and Grapow's Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, Vol. 5.
Acknowledgment: Thanks to Egyptologist Stefan Baumann for guidance on modern transliteration and pronunciation.