Cimarosti is considered to have its roots in the northeast of Italy, particularly in Friuli-Venezia Giulia and the Veneto. It would derive from the Venetian and Friulian dialectal term cimaròst, whose literal meaning is "summit of the mountains", which suggests that the first bearers of the surname could have lived or worked in mountainous areas, or come from them.

E. Rossoni notes that the surname and its variants would derive from nicknames, a hypothesis that he supports in a passage of the Baldus by Teofilo Folengo, a writer born in Mantua in 1491. Rossoni adds that Cimarrusti could be a surname of the region of Puglia formed by Cima plus arrusti, a term that in the Calabrian dialect means "turnip" or "broccoli".

As for the distribution of the variants in Italy, the authors agree that Cimarosti is rare and characteristic of the Venice area and of western Friuli; Cimarosto, also rare, is Venetian; Cimarrusto, extremely rare, seems to be from the Foggia area; Cimarrusti, very rare, is peculiar to the zone that covers Bari, Matera and Taranto; Cimarusti appears in the Bari area; and Cimmarrusti and Cimmarusti, likewise rare, are concentrated in the Bari area, especially in Valenzano.