The authors differ on the origin of this surname. E. Rossoni derives it from the Latin cognomen Cato (Catonis), linked historically to the figure of Marcus Porcius Cato the Censor, a Roman politician of the 2nd century BC. According to Rossoni, its transformation into a surname would have been reactivated in the late medieval period thanks to the literary recovery of the figure of Cato the Younger, a character whom Dante and Virgil meet at the beginning of Purgatory in the Divine Comedy. From the geographical point of view, Rossoni places the form Catone in the Tyrrhenian strip of Campania, and the variant Catoni in Tuscany, with an important specific area in Rome.

V. Blunda proposes, on the other hand, a Greek etymology, deriving it from Catònes, a personal name preserved in the Byzantine onomastic tradition. According to Blunda, the surname would have entered the regional onomastics through the transmission of Greek personal names from the period of Byzantine influence until its fixing as a family surname, and he documents it in eastern Sicily.