Matsouki
Matsouki is a village and a former community in the Ioannina regional unit, Epirus, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality North Tzoumerka, of which it is a municipal unit. The municipal unit has an area of 35.360 km2. Population 274.
Name
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. The toponym is derived from the word matsouki meaning a 'stick, club'. The term matsouka is found in medieval Greek and borrowed from the Venetian mazzoca. 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'. 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'.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. 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. The surname Matsoukis was formed, as above, the personal name Matsoukas.