E. Rossoni notes that the surname would derive from a nickname originating in the Latin term canilia, which designated wheat bran and which in archaic usage took the form caniglia to refer to fodder for horses. Rossoni records signs of its transformation into a surname in Mesagne, in the Brindisi area, at least from the second half of the 17th century. Its distribution covers the Chieti area in Abruzzo; the Brindisi and Taranto areas in Puglia; the Naples area in Campania; and the Catania and Syracuse areas in Sicily.

V. Blunda, for his part, considers it a surname of Sicilian dialectal origin, formed from the word canìgghia, which in that dialect means "bran" or "coarse flour", that is, the residue of the grinding of wheat separated from the white flour. Blunda warns that the popular interpretation that associates it with the Italian cane ("dog") or with a diminutive of it is a false etymology, and proposes that the surname could have originated in the trade of the miller or as a nickname applied to a person of humble origin.

Rossoni highlights as a notable figure the Neapolitan soprano Maria Caniglia, born in Naples in 1906.