F. De Laurentiis notes that this surname is diffused throughout Italy and derives from place names of the Ponte or Ponti type, frequent in the Italian peninsula both as names of localities and to designate urban zones characterized by the presence of a bridge, which in each case gave rise to the formation of the surname.

R. Brondolo, for his part, proposes a complementary reading of an occupational or locative character: the surname would have been applied to families that lived beside a bridge or that were in charge of its maintenance, with a presence documented mainly in northern Italy.