The authors differ on the origin of the surname. E. Rossoni links it to the Latin venter ("belly", "abdominal cavity", "womb"), derived from the Indo-European root wet, with the nasal variant went, and proposes that the surname arose from a nickname related to this root. He considers it typical of southern Calabria.

P. Durante, on the other hand, proposes a Greek origin and relates it to the term benthos ("deep", "bottom"), although this hypothesis is presented in a tentative and incomplete way.