The authors agree that this surname is of Sicilian origin and derives from a Greek word, although they differ in the precise etymon and in the proposed meaning.

E. Rossoni places the surname in the Acireale area and in the Floridia area, both in Sicily. He links it to the Greek term karagma, with the sense of "branded, engraved, seal", and suggests that it would have functioned as a nickname alluding to some particular condition of the founder of the family line, later transformed into a surname.

V. Blunda proposes, on the other hand, that the Greek etymon is caramma, meaning "fissure of the ground" or natural cleft of the soil. According to this interpretation, the nickname would have been applied to the ancestor for his residence near fissured ground, and thus became a surname within the onomastics of southern Italy.