This unusual name is of Scottish origin, and is a locational surname deriving from the lands named after their original holders, the Tolmic(e)s, in the Highland regions and in the Hebrides. The modern surname, found as "Tolmie and "Tolme", has also been recorded as "Tolmach" (1612), and the Tolmies of the Hebrides are called "Clann Talvaich". One, William Tolmie was christened on February 20th 1644, in Inverness, and the marriage of John Tolmie and Elizabeth Ritchie was recorded in Edinburgh, Midlothian, on October 25th, 1787. A master mariner named Norman Tolmie, born in 1734, the son of William Mor Tolmie and Kathanne MacKenzie, settled in New York in the mid 18th Century and married one Phoebe Comeris; he died in 1787. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Androw Tolmi, Borough offical, which was dated 1612. Records of Inverness, during the reign of James V1 of Scotland and 1 of England, 1603 - 1625. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

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