B. Zuanella describes this surname as typical of Biarzo, a locality beside San Pietro al Natisone, where it became extinct around 1700. He classifies it as a surname of "culinary" origin, derived from the word čorba, a term of Turkish origin that designates a watery soup of poor quality, and which is also used as an offensive expression equivalent to "stupid". The word entered first into Serbian —where the čorba is a local soup highly seasoned with meat and vegetables— and from there passed to Croatian and to Slovene. Zuanella proposes that some local itinerant merchant picked it up on his journeys through the Balkans and incorporated it into his everyday speech, until the neighbours ascribed it to him as a nickname, which over time became a surname. He notes that the word never became integrated into the Slovene dialect of the Natisone and that its presence in the local onomastics was purely occasional.

E. Rossoni agrees on the Serbian root —which he transcribes as korba— with the same double sense of soup or broth and of insult equivalent to "fool or simpleton", and links it to the Pordenone area, especially to Montereale Valcellina. Rossoni adds a second independent hypothesis: the surname could derive from the old Italian word corba, which means "basket", which would open a different origin, foreign to the Slavic influence.