The authors agree that this surname is typically southern and would derive, by contraction, from the Calabrian place name Tiriolo, a locality in the province of Catanzaro.

F. Miranda adds that Tiriolo was formerly called Tryoros and that, according to tradition, it was founded by the Greeks six hundred years before the Trojan War. He notes that the surname has its main nuclei in Sicily and in Calabria, though it is also diffused in Lombardy, Piedmont, Lazio, Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany. In Sicily, its presence is especially notable in the Messina, Palermo, Catania, Agrigento and Trapani areas.

E. Rossoni places the surname also in the Reggio Calabria area and in various Sicilian provinces, among them Messina, Catania, Palermo, Trapani and Agrigento.