The authors agree that the surname is related to the term designating the almond or the almond tree.

E. De Felice specifies that it was formed from nicknames and, more frequently, from place names and their corresponding gentilics, which have as their base the regional term amèndola or mèndola, mèndula ("almond" or "almond tree"). Among the place names, frequent in the area with the meaning of "almond grove", the most important are Amendolara (in the Cosenza area) and Amendolèa —locally pronounced amendolìa— (in the Reggio Calabria area), a stream and a small centre of the Aspromonte.

De Felice notes that the surname is very widespread in the peninsular south and in Sicily.

V. Blunda, for the Sicilian variant, derives it from the Greek etymon Amygdàle ("almond"), linked to the lexicon of Mediterranean tree crops. He notes that the Greek root is the same that survives in the Spanish "almendra" —through Arabic— and in the Italian mandorla. He adds that the cultivation of the almond tree was introduced to Sicily by the Greek colonists and became one of the distinctive features of the island's agrarian landscape, famous to this day for its almond production, especially in the Avola area.