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Tuisto or Tuisco was according to Tacitus (Germania, ch. 2) the ancestor of all Germanic tribes. This honour he shared with his son, Mannus(Borr). According to Jakob Grimm, his name and variant forms (Thuisco, Thuiskon, Tuisco) come from the adjective tivisco derived from the name of the god Tiu; the name Tiu, Proto-Germanic *Tiwaz, derives from Proto-Indo-European *Dyeus, the god of the daylit sky, and the adjective derived from it could mean either "celestial" or "son of Tiu". This etymology however presupposes that Tuisco is the original name, and Tuisto a scribal error. More accepted is the explanation of Tuisto as from tvi- "two".

Some^{[citation needed]} have suggested that this describes a hermaphrodite (two-sexed) being, and then go on to postulate that, if so Tuisto could be the same being as the primeval giant Ymir who was a hermaphrodite that procreated the race of giants.

An alternative theory^{[citation needed]} relates Tuisto to various Germanic words meaning "conflict/dispute/division", e.g. German zwist, Swedish, tvista, Dutch twisten, etc. (which also spring from the "tvi-" root) and compares his status to the Roman god Mars and his relationship to the founding of Rome. It is Mars and his son Romulus, and not Jupiter, who is cited as the father of Rome and its peoples.

Based on this comparison, it is possible that Tuisto is an older name for the Norse god Tyr who is often compared to Mars, and who is seen to be belligerent. In this way, Tuisto means the two faces or the two palms and represent every opposites that our world is composed with: the sun and the moon, the day and the night, the heat and the coldness, the male and female, etc. Furthermore, in the same way as the Greek Zeus and the Indic Dyaus, whose names are etymologically related to that of Tyr, were birthed by Earth goddesses (Gaea, Prthivi), Tuisto is said^{[citation needed]} to have sprung from the earth.