No members of this gens are known to have held any of the higher offices of the Roman state, and hardly any are mentioned in history.
The nomen Albinovanus belongs to a class of gentilicia ending in -anus, of which some are derived from place names,[1] but many are also typical of Etruria.
[2] The first of this family to appear in history, Publius Albinovanus, was among the partisans of Gaius Marius, who indeed had a large Etruscan clientele, making that a likely origin for the Albinovani.
The same Albinovanus later commanded a legion of Lucanians in 82 BC, suggesting an affinity with that region instead, but there is no further evidence of such a connection.
[3] In older scholarship, Albinovanus was not recognized as a nomen gentilicium, and was supposed to be a cognomen belonging to another gens.