The authors agree that this surname has among its possible etymons the root that designates the alder, a riverside tree whose soft wood was valued for carvings and domestic utensils. E. Rossoni notes that the surname may derive from the Latin name Vernus or Verna, meaning "spring", or else from the Celtic root verna, which designates precisely that tree; he also contemplates the possibility of derivation from various place names containing that root, or from nicknames that indicated the northern origin of the founder of the lineage.

V. Blunda, for his part, analyses the surname from a Sicilian and dialectal perspective: he derives it from the word vèrna, "alder", and proposes that it could have arisen as an occupational nickname applied to someone linked to the trade of the carver or to the use of that wood.

Rossoni also distinguishes formal variants of the surname: Verni, documented especially in the Bologna, Florence, Ravenna, Forlì, Rimini and Pesaro area, with a presence also in the Teramo, Rome and Bari area; and Verno, a very rare form located in Oderzo, in the Treviso area. The main form presents specific zones of concentration in Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Romagna, the Pesaro area, Abruzzo, Rome and Bari.