@neauoire Because wood knots sometimes look like eyes.

@neauoire It just makes it a name, like “Cenderella” is a namified “cenere”.

@neauoire Knots in wood are sometimes referred to as eyes, or at least look like them. It could also be a play on words as it "sounds diminutive" in nature; as there is another word, "piccino", which also use in reference to children.

@neauoire in the original story, pinnocio was a living slab of wood who would cry when anyone tried to carve it.

>>>

"What name shall I give him?" he said to himself; "I think I will call him Pinocchio. It is a name that will bring him luck. I once knew a whole family so called. There was Pinocchio the father, Pinocchia the mother, and Pinocchi the children, and all of them did well. The richest of them was a beggar."

@neauoire I am loving this etymological adventure. Noticed someone above had mentioned the knots in the pine tree. However having recognized a face on anything can have an animating effect in our brains.

@neauoire -òcchio is a productive diminutive suffix (which are legion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diminutives_by_language#Italian), like in "ranocchio".
https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/occhio_res-c6215ab4-0028-11de-9d89-0016357eee51/

@neauoire
I think it's unrelated to "occhio" as the word for eye, it sounds more like a typical (especially in certain regions) old way to construct a diminutive, from pino in this case, like barbocchio, pastrocchio, etc