E. Rossoni notes that this surname is characteristic of the Rovigo, Padua and Verona areas, with a probable presence also in the Milan, Varese and Pavia areas. He interprets it as a collective form with the suffix -aglia, which in its old use had a collective and not pejorative value, referring to the descendants of a Francesco whose name would have been reduced to Chino. Thus, Chinaglia would be equivalent to "the Chini", that is, his descendants.

F. De Laurentiis agrees on the starting point and specifies that Chino is an apocopated and familiar form of Franceschino, an affectionate diminutive of Francesco, from which the surname was formed.