F. Miranda notes that it is a typically Venetian surname, with presence especially in the Padua area —in localities such as San Giorgio delle Pertiche, Campo San Martino and Padua itself— and in the Treviso area, particularly in Castelfranco Veneto. Miranda also records its diffusion in Lombardy, Piedmont, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Tuscany, Lazio, Puglia, Trentino and Sicily, where it appears in the Ragusa, Messina, Enna, Catania and Syracuse areas.

Regarding the origin, Miranda proposes that the surname probably derives from the medieval name Bettus, although he does not rule out that it comes from a dialectal form of words containing the Germanic root bertha ("luminous") or the Celtic bert ("bearer"), or from the name Benedetto, abbreviated and altered by dialect. A. Bongioanni, for his part, studies it as a given name of Latin origin and describes it as an abbreviated affectionate form peculiar to Tuscany, derived from Benedetto, Zanobi, Iacobo and, in the feminine, also from Elisabetta.