The authors agree that the surname derives from the medieval auspicious given name Bontempo, meaning "good time" or "propitious moment", granted to children both as a wish of a happy life and as a sign of gratitude for their birth.

E. De Felice notes that the surname is distributed sporadically throughout Italy, and that the variant Buontempo is typical of the south of the Italian peninsula. F. Miranda adds that in some cases this name belongs to the group of appellatives attributed as an omen to foundling children, which reinforces its auspicious character and its use detached from biological filiation.

Miranda also documents compound forms of the surname: in several Sicilian municipalities it appears combined with Scavo, giving rise to the compound surname Bontempo Scavo, whose second element would derive from a contracted form of the Latin term sclavus, possibly to indicate that the founding ancestors had been reduced to slavery, probably by the Saracens. In Centuripe the variant Bontempo Ciancianella is also recorded, where ciancianella is a Sicilian dialectal term meaning "little bell".

According to Miranda, the surname is present in numerous municipalities of Sicily —especially in the Messina, Catania, Palermo and Syracuse areas—, as well as in regions of northern and central Italy such as Veneto, Abruzzo, Lombardy, Piedmont and Molise.