F. Miranda notes that the surname presents an uncertain etymology and proposes two hypotheses. The first links it to the Portuguese word artimanha, meaning "artifice, cunning, fraud" —a term which, according to the Battaglia dictionary, also appears rarely in Italian with the sense of "artifice"—. The second hypothesis connects it with a personal name of Lombard origin composed of the elements hardhu ("valour") and mann ("man"), meaning "man of valour". Miranda also mentions the existence of a place name Artimagna in Troina, a locality of Sicily.

V. Blunda rules out the ambiguity and considers it a Sicilian surname of Germanic root, derived from the compound Hardhu Mann, meaning "strong man" or "brave male". According to Blunda, it is a phonetic variant of the anthroponym Hartmann, with the palatalisation characteristic of the Sicilian dialect, and the ending -magna would be the result of the adaptation to the morphological system of Italian, in which the Germanic consonant cluster is reinterpreted according to Romance phonotactics. Both authors agree in placing the surname in Sicily; Miranda locates it specifically in the comune of Regalbuto, in the Enna area.

Note: The Battaglia is one of the major dictionaries of 20th-century Italian lexicography. It is not specifically onomastic (relating to surnames), but is a reference for the common and archaic lexicon of the language.