Family name origins & meanings
- Sicilian and southern Italian : occupational name from medieval Greek tourmarchēs ‘leader of a squadron’ or ‘governor of a tourma’ (an administrative region of the Byzantine empire, of which Sicily and southern Italy at one time formed a part) from Latin turma ‘squadron’ + Greek arkhē ‘lead’, ‘rule’. The term is attested in 1091 in Greek sources in the form tromarkhis.