The authors agree that this surname derives from dialectal alterations of the Greek personal name Eráklios, related to Heracles. E. Rossoni also notes the possible reference to provenance from the Greek city of Herakleion, the old name of Candia, on the island of Crete, which was Venetian until 1669, when the Turkish conquest caused Italian and Greek refugees to flee towards the coasts of the Italian peninsula.

V. Blunda specifies that the Greek personal name was transmitted to southern Italy by Byzantine route, and that in Sicilian onomastics it became a surname along the family line. Rossoni, for his part, places the surname in the Naples area —with presence in Naples and Pozzuoli— and in Calabria, especially in the Crotone area, including Cutro and Rocca di Neto. Blunda also records it in Sicily.