Di origine normanna, si stabilì prima in Napoli, donde un ramo passò a Salerno. Ha goduto nobiltà in Pozzuoli, Messina, Napoli nel seggio di Porto e Salerno nel seggio di Campo. Ebbe i feudi di Acquaro, di Montecorvino, di San Cipriano ed il marchesato di Oliveto. Landolfo fu tra i baroni che combatterono in Terra Santa nel 1191; Nicolò e Tommaso furono feudatari e militi di Carlo I d’Angiò; Domenico, giudice della Gran Corte della Vicaria, luogotenente del regno ed ambasciatore al Gran Duca di Toscana nel 1675. Che i membri della famiglia Cioffi siano noncuranti delle cose volgari, ripromettendosi dalle sole loro energie la dovuta ricompensa, lo provano i documenti fino ad oggi conosciuti come il Dizionario Storico-Blasonico del commendatore G.B. di Crollalanza che ne ha raccolte le tracce lasciate dalla famiglia in quelle città ove ebbe dimora ricoprendo cariche legislative, militari o altro, contribuendo non poco alla riuscita di quei documenti utili alla scoperta di questa famiglia.
. Riguardo a questo cognome abbiamo ritrovato ulteriori informazioni storiche in altri archivi. Purtroppo in lingua originale Inglese. : The associated coat of arms for this name are recorded in J.B Rietstaps Armorial General. Illustrated by V & H.V Rolland’s. This monumental work took 23 years to complete and 85,000 coats of Arms are included in this work. This Italian Last Name of CIOFFI was an occupational name for one who made coffers, boxes and chests; one who kept a treasure box; the name also applied to one who made and sold coifs, a kind of close-fitting cap for both sexes. Many of the modern family names throughout Europe reflect the profession or occupation of their forbears in the Middle Ages and derive from the position held by their ancestors in the village, noble household or religious community in which they lived and worked. The addition of their profession to their birth name made it easier to identify individual tradesmen and craftsmen. As generations passed and families moved around, so the original identifying names developed into the corrupted but simpler versions that we recognise today. As the agricultural depression of southern Italy worsened towards the end of the 19th century, people started to escape to the New World. The exodus started in earnest in 1887 with Brazil and other parts of Latin America being the original destinations. By 1893, the economy had improved in the United States and people headed there from Italy in greater and greater numbers. In 1898 there were more Italian immigrants to the USA than from any other state. In the post war era, more than a quarter of Italians left the state for a new life. They joined a flood of immigrants to America which was averaging a million a year in the pre war years. The origins of Italian last names are not clear, and much work remains to be done on medieval Italian records. It seems that stable bynames, in some cases hereditary, were in use in the Venetian Republic by the end of the 10th century. The typical Italian Last Name endings are ‘i’ and ‘o’, the former being characteristic of northern Italy. The singular form ‘o’ is more typical of southern Italy. Over the centuries, most people in Europe have accepted their Last Name as a fact of life, as irrevocable as an act of God. However much the individual may have liked or disliked the Last Name, they were stuck with it, and people infrequently modified them by personal choice. A more common form of variation was in fact involuntary, when an official change was made, in other words, a clerical error….
Noble title: Nobili
Coat of arms: Partito: nel primo troncato: a) d’oro, b) di rosso a tre rose d’oro (Saracco); nel secondo d’azzurro alla banda ondata d’oro (Riminaldi…