Antonio was probably from Teramo, in northern Abruzzo (Kingdom of Naples), not far from the Adriatic coast. The possibility that two different composers, "Antonio da Teramo" and "Zacara da Teramo", were conflated into one person was removed by research into the composer's life by Agostino Ziino. (Another composer with a similar name, Nicolaus Zacharie, was of the following generation of composers). Antonio's nickname "Zaccara" (or "Zachara"; often regularized in modern editions as "Zacara") probably is a reference to his short stature (he is described as having "statura corporis parva" in a 15th-century biography). The name Zacara means a small thing or a thing of little value; hence the reason why Antonio never used the nickname himself and documents produced in circles close to the composer are careful to call him some variation on "Antonius vulgatus dictus Zachara" (Anthony, commonly called Zacara).