E. Rossoni considers this surname proper to the Reggio Calabria area, with a particular presence in Campo Calabro and Villa San Giovanni. He derives it from the medieval name of Lombard origin Idone, an aphaeretic form of the name Widone.

V. Blunda places it as a Sicilian surname of Germanic origin, likewise derived from the personal name Idone, though he reads it as a form with the augmentative suffix -one on the root id ("work, effort, deed"), productive in the formation of medieval personal names. Blunda warns that the popular association with the Italian adjective idoneo ("apt, suitable") is a false etymology: that adjective comes from the Latin idoneus, with no relation to the Germanic root of the personal name. He further notes that the surname survives in areas of central and southern Italy where Germanic anthroponymy spread through medieval resettlement.

Both authors agree that the starting point of the surname is the medieval personal name Idone of Germanic origin, although they differ on the area of distribution —Rossoni locates it in Calabria and Blunda in Sicily— and on the morphological analysis of the term.