The surname presents independent origins in at least two regions of Italy: Sardinia and Sicily.

E. Rossoni notes that in Sardinia the surname is very widespread and could derive from any of the numerous localities of the island formed with the Sardinian word sedda, or else from nicknames linked to that same term, which in Sardinian designates both the saddle and the summit of a mountain or hill. In this second case, the origin would point to the activity of saddler of the family line. Rossoni documents the surname in medieval Sardinian sources, among them the condaghe of the 11th and 12th centuries and among the signatories of the Peace of Eleonora of 1388.

V. Blunda, for his part, records it as a surname of dialect origin in Sicily, derived from the word sèdda, with the meaning of "saddle"; as a surname, it could have arisen from an occupational nickname applied to the saddler or to one who worked with pack animals.