E. Rossoni notes that this surname —together with its variant Misiti— is proper to the province of Reggio Calabria, in the region of Calabria. Rossoni places Mesiti in the area of Gioiosa Ionica, Cittanova and Bianco, while Misiti is concentrated in the municipalities of Cinquefrondi, Melicucco and Feroleto della Chiesa. Both forms derive from the Greek term mesitis, which designated the mediator or commercial broker: the one who put the merchant in contact with the buyer in the sphere of business. The surname therefore represents the fixing as a surname of an occupational name attributed to the founding ancestor of the line.

P. Durante agrees on the Greek origin and links it to the root mesos, with the sense of "of the middle", which would point to the same semantic field of intermediation that Rossoni indicates.