Family name origins & meanings
- Italian : most probably from a pet form of the personal name Pio ‘Pius’, or a pet form of Olimpio. Alternatively, it could be a metonymic occupational name for a peg or stake maker, from piolo ‘peg’, ‘stake’, or from a dialect word for celery, from erba apiola ‘horehound’, a medicinal herb, or from melo apiolo meaning ‘apple’. Otherwise, it could be a Tuscanized form of Calabrian piulu ‘screech owl’, or from Piedmontese piola ‘ax’, ‘hatchet’.