The surname shows multiple independent clusters of origin (ceppi), arisen in different regions without direct relation to one another. E. Rossoni identifies small areas of presence for Mondella in the north of Milan —specifically at Giussano—, at Chiari within the Brescia area, in Rome, at Acerra within the Naples area, at Carosino within the Taranto area and at Lamezia Terme within the Catanzaro area. For the form Mondelli, Rossoni notes a Lombard area around Como —including Cernobbio, Griante and Como itself— and in Milan, another in Rome, one in the Salerno area with a presence at Perdifumo, Casal Velino, Castellabate and Monteforte Cilento, and the most numerous at Manfredonia within the Foggia area, and in the Bari area.

F. Miranda adds that Mondella also appears in Emilia-Romagna and that in Sicily there is a presence at Catenanuova, in the Enna area. He further notes the form Mondello, present at Catenanuova and at Centuripe, and points out that this surname could derive from the place name Mondello, a hamlet and tourist resort of Palermo.

As for the origin, the authors agree that these surnames may derive from hypocoristics —affectionate and diminutive forms— of names such as Edmondo or Raimondo, or else from place names such as Mondelli in the Ossola area. Miranda specifies that the lexical base could be a southern word adapted from the Arabic mudd, the name of a measure for cereals —equivalent to the Latin moggio and the Greek μόδιος—, used in Palermo and other regions before the adoption of the metric decimal system. Rossoni, for his part, distinguishes between the Lombard mondello —equivalent to four coppi, that is, the surface arable in a day— and the Norman mondello, a unit of capacity equivalent to a little over four kilos, used in Puglia to measure olives and cereals. Rossoni also notes, as a curiosity, that Manzoni chose precisely Mondella as the surname of Lucia in I Promessi Sposi.