The authors agree that this surname derives from a nickname referring to short stature, formed from dialectal adjectives meaning "short, low, of small stature". E. De Felice notes that the dialectal forms vary according to the zone: curto or curtu in southern Italy, and curto, curt or cürt in the north. De Felice indicates that the surname is spread with not very high frequency throughout the south, where it appears in the forms Curto, De Curti(s) and Lo Curto, although it is more frequent in the north, especially in Emilia-Romagna and in the Veneto, where the forms Curti and Di Curti predominate.

V. Blunda focuses his analysis on the Sicilian variant, where the dialectal word cùrtu gave rise to the surname as a descriptive nickname of the physique. Blunda also establishes a semantic distinction with respect to the form Curcio: while cùrciu described someone with shortened limbs, cùrtu alluded to short stature in general terms. This kind of physical motivation is, according to Blunda, frequent in Sicilian somatic surnames.