E. Rossoni proposes that the surname would derive from the fact that the founding ancestor of the lineage lived or worked in a gypsum quarry, called gissara in the Sicilian dialect. He documents it as a very rare surname, proper to the Syracuse area, with a presence in the localities of Buccheri and Floridia.

V. Blunda agrees with that reading and develops it in greater detail. He notes that the underlying dialect word is jissàra, meaning "gypsum quarry", and that the surname may have originated in the provenance of an ancestor connected with the evaporitic quarries of south-central Sicily, an area rich in gypsum outcrops alongside the well-known sulphur mines of Caltanissetta, Enna and Agrigento. Blunda also stresses that the surname forms a lexical pair with Gessaro —"plasterer"—, where the base designates the trade and this surname the place of origin, with an e/i vowel alternation proper to the characteristic fluctuation of the Sicilian dialect.