The authors agree that the surname originates in a place name: the locality or localities called Figino. However, they differ on which of them is the main source and on the etymology of the name.

E. Rossoni notes that the surname would derive from the place name Figino Serenza, in the Como area, or from Figino, in the Milan area, documented in a deed of 1200. Rossoni places its transformation into a surname in Milan during the second half of the 15th century, with the rich merchant Pietro Figino, who had built in 1472 the famous Coperto dei Figini in the square of the Duomo. He also highlights the painter Giovanni Ambrogio Figino (1553–1608) as a notable figure of the surname, and notes that the form Figino is very rare.

Besides Figino Serenza and Figino in the Milan area, there is Figino sotto San Fermo della Battaglia and Figino in the Canton of Ticino, as well as the feminine place name Figina. These localities should be linked with the Tuscan Figline, derived from the Latin officina, with the sense of workshop of products of baked clay, and more precisely with fundus figlinus, that is, a terrain destined for the production of vessels, tiles and similar objects. As support, a document of 1017 mentions un campo in loco et fundo Feglini qui dicitur Teculario.

An alternative hypothesis: the linguist Salvioni related in 1899 the place name with the Latin ficulinus, derived from "fig", and in 1900 made it derive from fageus, "beech". The scholar Olivieri leans towards the first hypothesis. Amis di Alessandria (see references), for its part, adheres to the etymology of fageus through the form fagineus, evoking a wooded environment with beech groves, and links the surname with Figino, a frazione of Monterosso in the Cuneo area.

In the Middle Ages the Figini were a family of capitaneal rank, recorded in the Matricola Nobilium Familiarum of 1377, whose members had the right to passive election as ordinary canons of the Duomo of Milan.