The authors agree that this surname has roots in Sicily and is related to Arabic and dialectal Sicilian, although they differ in the emphasis of each interpretation.

V. Blunda classifies the surname within the group of phytonymic surnames —that is, derived from names of plants— and links it to the Sicilian dialectal word ficàra, which designates the fig tree or a plantation of fig trees. He notes that the Ficus carica was an omnipresent tree in the domestic orchards of Sicily, and that the surname could have originated in a minor place name referring to a spot with fig trees or in the trade of the gardener who cultivated them.

E. Rossoni proposes that the surname would derive, directly or by dialectal modifications, from the place name Ficarra, in the province of Messina, documented in a testament of 1354. He adds two additional interpretations: a possible derivation from the Arabic fakhar ("glorious, worthy of esteem"), through a nickname converted into a surname, and another that makes both lines coincide, by noting that the place name Ficarra itself could in turn derive from the Sicilian dialectal word for "fig tree".