F. Miranda notes that the surname derives from trade nicknames linked to commercial exchange: from baratta, a form of the verb barattare ("to barter"), or from baratto ("barter"). He also proposes a Greek etymology from prátten ("to trade"). As early testimonies he cites a Graciadeus Baratellius in the Carta Venditionis of Brescia of 1188, and a Franciscus Baratellus in the Milan of 1630.

R. Brondolo, on the other hand, starts from a different meaning of the term baratta: "fight, quarrel, struggle", so he interprets the nickname as alluding to the character of the ancestor, without linking it to the commercial sphere.

The surname has independent origins in different regions of Italy. Miranda indicates that it is a pan-Italian surname, with greater presence in the north —Piedmont, Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto— and specific areas also in Tuscany, Lazio, Campania, Calabria and Sicily, where it appears concentrated in the provinces of Messina, Catania and Palermo, as well as in the Enna area. Brondolo, for his part, circumscribes it to Piedmont and Lombardy.