Matsouki

Local tradition derives the toponym from the villagers gouging out the eye of a terrible giant on the opposite mountain with a matsouki 'club' or they drove away the Ottomans who came to plunder the village with clubs.^[2] The toponym is derived from the word matsouki meaning a 'stick, club'.^[2] The term matsouka is found in medieval Greek and borrowed from the Venetian mazzoca.^[2] In Aromanian the forms of the word are măčĭucă and mațucă, in Romanian maciucă and Albanian macuk/ë, -a, all meaning 'the shepherd’s staff'.^[2] In relation to the village, matsouki refers either to livestock breeders or a once local pseudo-doctor nicknamed Matsoukas, from matsouka 'shepherd's rod' and used in a local phrase 'Matsoukas from the goats became a doctor'.^[2]

Linguist Kostas Oikonomou wrote the use of the word in the plural singular in the Aromanian form of the toponym is also valid, Matsouts/-li derived from the plural măčĭuțe of the Aromanian noun măčĭucă.^[2] Oikonomou also states the origin of the locality from the surname Matsoukis cannot be ruled out by transformation into a neuter analogous to the gender of the words village, estate and so on.^[6] The surname Matsoukis was formed, as above, the personal name Matsoukas.^[6]

Matsouki has an Aromanian population and is an Aromanian speaking village.^[7][3] In the early 21st century, elderly people were bilingual in the community language and Greek, whereas younger residents under 40 might have understood the community language but did not use it.^[8]