The authors agree that Buda is a surname with a strong presence in Sicily, derived from a dialectal or Late Latin term linked to the plant world.

E. Rossoni describes it as a surname present in a scattered way throughout Italy, with a large Sicilian cluster especially in the Catania and Messina areas and in the Reggio area, another in the Forlì area, one in the Chieti area and another in Trieste. He derives it from nicknames originating in the Late Latin word buda, a type of reed used in the making of seats and bottles. The surname would thus indicate the trade of the ancestor —gatherer of reeds or maker of chairs or bottles—, or would allude to someone of an especially flexible character.

V. Blunda presents it as a Sicilian surname of dialectal origin, belonging to the group of surnames derived from plant names. It comes from the dialectal word bbùda, meaning "stalk of the ear of grain". As a surname it could have originated in a nickname applied to a tall and thin person, in a plant metaphor frequent in Sicilian popular onomastics, or be linked to the trade of the thresher, in charge of separating the grain from the straw in the great courtyards of the cereal farms of the island's interior. He notes that the motivation is parallel to that of the surname Busa ("stalk of ampelodesmos").