The authors agree that this surname derives from a dialectal nickname that designated a mischievous, restless child or one of a very lively character. E. Rossoni links it to the Calabrian term furfarèddru, with the sense of "mischievous, an over-lively boy, said of the one who lights up like a match", and notes that the surname has presence both in Calabria —in the Catanzaro area, concretely in Lamezia Terme, and in the Reggio Calabria area, in Campo Calabro and Brancaleone— and in Sicily, with a specific nucleus in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, in the Messina area.

V. Blunda provides a Sicilian perspective and proposes as etymon the dialectal word furarèddu, meaning "restless, unruly child". According to Blunda, the term was applied affectionately to the child of inexhaustible energy, a typical figure of the Sicilian peasant childhood, and could have been transformed into a surname when that nickname became fixed as an inherited identity mark of the descendants. The slight difference of form between the two proposed etymons —furfarèddru and furarèddu— may respond to dialectal variants between Calabrian and Sicilian.