The authors agree that this surname is of Greek-Byzantine origin and derives from the Greek term κρυφός, meaning "hidden, concealed". G. Rohlfs notes that the surname is present in Reggio Calabria and also in Sicily, and that in Greece the form Kryphòs survives as a living surname. He adds that in Argentina it may appear without an accent (Crifo).

V. Blunda, for his part, works with the form cryfòs with the sense of "hidden, secret, mysterious" and proposes that the surname would have arisen as a nickname applied to an ancestor for his reserved character or his tendency to keep to the margins, following the habitual patterns of nicknames derived from temperament.