The authors agree that this surname derives from the Italian participle trovato ("found") and was assigned in the past to abandoned children, in direct reference to the act of their finding, generally in the ruota degli esposti (the foundling wheel) or at the door of a church, hospital or other institution of shelter. It is a surname of descriptive and functional character, comparable to others such as Esposito, Ignoti or Proietti, which replace the unknown filiation with an objective circumstance of the register.

F. Miranda notes that the term trovatelli was used in Italian to designate the state of children abandoned at birth, and that religious communities were the main ones responsible for assigning this type of surname. Miranda documents a wide presence in Sicily, with concentrations especially in the Catania, Messina, Palermo, Syracuse and Ragusa areas, as well as in the Enna area. He also records nuclei in Calabria, Lombardy, Piedmont, Lazio and Tuscany.

E. De Felice specifies that the greatest frequency of Trovato occurs in the Catania area, while the variant Trovatello is documented mainly in the Messina area, the surname being sporadic in other regions. It is also considered that Trovati and Trovatelli are variants with a greater presence in the north and centre of Italy, while Trovò is an abbreviated and dialectal form recorded in Veneto and Piedmont.