F. Miranda notes that this surname continues medieval names formed from the words carbone, carbonaio or carbonaro, linked to the extraction, trade and sale of coal, and that they refer to a founding ancestor who practised that trade.

B. Zuanella provides a specific local perspective: the surname appears documented in Brischis and San Pietro al Natisone from the beginning of the 17th century, and in the parish books of the latter locality it also figures under the Slovene form Cuotar or Kuotar. This dialectal term designated the maker of charcoal, an expert in charcoal kilns (called kuote in the local Slovene). Zuanella specifies that the terms kuotišča, kuota and kuotar derive from the Friulian noun cuete, a deverbal of cuei ("to cook"), in reference to the slow process of cooking the wood in the charcoal kiln.

According to Zuanella, the charcoal-making activity was especially developed in the valleys of the Natisone towards the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century, and attracted professional workers coming mainly from western Friuli, in particular from Meduno. Miranda, for his part, places the greatest concentration of the surname in Sicily, with notable presence in the Catania, Ragusa, Syracuse, Palermo and Messina areas, in addition to records in Lombardy, Puglia, Campania, Lazio, Liguria, Calabria, Tuscany and Veneto.