E. Rossoni notes that this surname is characteristic of Chioggia, in the Venice area, and links it to the Latin nomen Carisius or Carisus, documented in the Historiae of Livy and in old Roman inscriptions. From that same root would derive related forms: Carisio, very scarce and peculiar to the area between Pavia and Piedmont, and Carrisi, characteristic of the Salento area —that is, the southernmost zone of the Puglia region, in southern Italy—. The form Carrisio, unique, would probably be the result of a transcription error.

V. Blunda proposes a different etymology and derives the surname from the Greek caris, "grace", a term that also designated beauty and divine favour. According to Blunda, this word functioned from ancient times as a personal name in the Greek Mediterranean sphere, both feminine and masculine, and its transformation into a surname would reflect the survival of that given name or laudatory nickname in the onomastic tradition of the region.

Both proposals —the Latin and the Greek— refer to a same phonetic base, which makes it difficult to determine which predominates in each geographical variant of the surname.