The authors agree that the surname derives from nicknames related to the agricultural activity of the first bearer, interpreted as someone "who treads the earth, who compacts it", probably a ploughman. F. Miranda notes that the surname is spread throughout Italy, with notable clusters in Lombardy, Piedmont, Sicily, Lazio, the Marche, Calabria, Emilia-Romagna, Liguria, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Veneto; in Sicily it appears in the provinces of Catania, Messina, Palermo, Trapani, Enna and Ragusa.

Alongside this agricultural interpretation, E. Rossoni and Miranda point out that in Sicily the dialectal term carcaterra designated a "little man, dwarf", so the surname could also have originated as a mocking nickname referring to the short stature of the bearer. V. Blunda goes deeper into this second route: he derives it from the Sicilian dialectal carcatèrra, with the sense of "stumpy, very short person", literally "the one who treads the earth closely". Blunda adds that surnames based on physical traits abound in medieval Sicilian anthroponymy and reflect the direct language of the rural culture of the island.

Rossoni also records the variant Incalcaterra, with a cluster in Sicily —especially in the Trapani area and Mazara del Vallo— and another in Civitavecchia, in the Rome area.