The authors agree that this surname derives from the numerous place names with the root villa, present throughout Italy. The term refers to the medieval meaning of "small rural nucleus, agricultural property" and also of "inhabited centre, village, borough".

R. Brondolo specifies that the word villa formerly designated the settlement —in most cases summery— in the meadows of the hills, to which the animals were led to pasture. It is considered that among the place names that illustrate this origin are Villa Raverio, Villa Romanò and Villa D'Adda.

E. Rossoni notes that the surname is typical mainly of Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria and Emilia-Romagna, with its epicentre in western Lombardy, although there are specific zones of scattered presence throughout Italy: Lazio, Abruzzo, the Salento area —that is, the southernmost zone of the Apulia region, in southern Italy—, the Naples area and Sicily.

F. De Laurentiis, on the other hand, considers it widely diffused throughout Italy, with a greater frequency in Liguria.

F. Miranda comments that it is a surname diffused throughout Italy, present in 1,519 municipalities of all the regions, in particular Lombardy, with the largest nucleus, Piedmont, Liguria, Lazio, Sicily, Veneto, and then Abruzzo, Campania, Apulia and Tuscany. In Sicily it is present in all the provinces, in particular Palermo, Agrigento, Catania and Messina; in the Enna area it is known in the municipalities of Centuripe and Catenanuova. This surname arises from the many place names containing the root villa present everywhere in Italy; it derives from the medieval term villa, meaning 'small hamlet', that is, a group of houses and lands.