The authors agree that the surname derives from the medieval name Bovo, popularised by the chivalric poem Bovo d'Antona, the Italian adaptation of the French poem Beuve de Hamptone, belonging to the Carolingian cycle and widely diffused in northern Italy during the 13th and 14th centuries.

A. Bongioanni notes that the given name Bovo is of Germanic origin and uncertain etymology, and mentions the figure of Saint Bovone, of Provençal origin, who died in the year 985 in Voghera, whose feast is celebrated on 22 May. Bongioanni links the diffusion of the surname mainly with Piedmont, Liguria and the south of peninsular Italy.

F. De Laurentiis adds that Bovo is also the name of a small locality in the province of Verona, which opens the possibility of a toponymic origin for some branches of the surname.

R. Brondolo adds that the character Bovo d'Antona was also taken up in the popular Reali di Francia. For the variants Boetti and Buetti, Brondolo also proposes a derivation from the dialectal term bö, bo, "ox", as a trade name linked to the care or work with that animal, with a presence in Piedmont and Lombardy.