Pinna is the Latin for a feather, and so for a quill — the tool of whoever did the writing. It carries a second sense too: a battlement, a fin, the raised edge of a thing.

Vaia comes from vaio, a dark or dappled grey — the word used for horses and for winter fur. Along the Greek-speaking south it also shadows Βάϊα, the palm fronds carried on Palm Sunday.

Joined, the name is rare and almost entirely Sicilian — Agrigento, Favara, Palermo. It is either a nickname for someone marked by a dark feather, or two households that became one surname at the point the registers wanted a single name.