The authors agree that the surname goes back to the dialect adjective griso, equivalent to "grey", originally applied to the colour of the hair, the beard or the skin. F. De Laurentiis specifies that this is a term proper to Venetan and notes that in some cases it may also have alluded to non-physical characteristics. For its part, Surnames in Italy also takes up the hypothesis of an origin in the Germanic name Gris, though it favours the chromatic explanation as the more likely, on the basis of parish registers.

Within the lexical family of griso, Grisoni is held to function as an augmentative, Grisini as a diminutive and Grisetti as a diminutive of an affectionate character. These variants arose as descriptive bynames which in time became surnames.