The authors differ in the etymology of this surname. E. Rossoni links it to the medieval masculine name Frasca, documented in the first half of the 13th century in a Sienese administrative transcription, where it appears as the name of a notary. Rossoni also records a feminine form of the same name in the Obituary of the church of S. Lorenzo di Cuvio, in the Varese area, dated 1283, and suggests that it is probably a contraction of Francesca. He also does not rule out that the surname may derive from ancient minor place names.

P. Durante proposes a different etymology, of Greek origin, linked to the word phrasso, meaning "maker of palisades".

V. Blunda offers a specifically Sicilian interpretation: he considers that the surname belongs to the group of phytonymic surnames and derives from the dialectal word frasca, which in Sicilian speech designates the Laburnum anagyroides, an ornamental shrub with yellow flowers, common on paths and thickets of the Sicilian interior. Blunda warns that the popular association with the Italian frasca ("branch, foliage") is a false etymology, and that the surname could have originated in a place name referring to a spot where that plant abounded.

As for its geographical distribution, Rossoni notes that the surname is of wide presence in Italy, with greater concentration in Lazio, Abruzzo, Campania, the Foggia and Bari areas, and in Sicily, especially in the Ragusa and Syracuse areas.