E. De Felice notes that the surname was formed from place names such as Rota d'Imagna, in the Bergamo area, and Rota Greca, in the Cosenza area. In some cases it may also be the hypocoristic form by aphaeresis of the medieval name Buonarrota or Buonarroto, present not only in Tuscany —where it survives sporadically in the surname Buonarroti, famous through Michelangelo— but also in northern Italy. This auspicious name is composed of buona and arrota or arroto, deverbals of arrogere, which in Old Tuscan and Italian means "addition" and "added," and was given to a child whose birth represented an additional gain for the family.

R. Brondolo proposes a different etymology: he links the surname with place names derived from the Latin rupta, with the sense of "way" or "path." As a second hypothesis, he connects it with (ar)rogita, -us, in the sense of "daughter" or "son come to be added," which coincides partly with De Felice's explanation of the component arrogere. Brondolo notes a presence of the surname in Lombardy and in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland.