E. Rossoni identifies areas of presence of the surname in the Udine area, in Monte Romano within the Viterbo area, in Rome and on the island of Lipari, in Sicily. According to Rossoni, this surname with its variants would derive from reduced forms and their familiar variants of a diminutive of the name Francesco or Luca, which would have given first Franceschino or Luchino, then Chino by reduction, and in some cases Chinello by an additional diminutive or Chinno by dialectal variant.

V. Blunda offers a different interpretation circumscribed to Sicily: the surname would come from the Sicilian dialectal word china, meaning "plump, well-nourished, corpulent", applied originally as a nickname to a woman of robust build. Blunda warns that the popular association with the Italian china ("slope, incline") or with the place name of the Asian country constitutes a false etymology, since the dialectal word bears no relation to the homophonic Italian noun nor to the geographical name.

Both proposals are not necessarily mutually exclusive: Rossoni's hypothesis points to an origin in the reduction of medieval hypocoristics of peninsular reach, while Blunda's describes a nickname motivation of a regional character, peculiar to the Sicilian environment.