The authors agree that these surnames derive from a medieval personal name of Germanic origin, although they differ as to which that base name is.

E. Rossoni holds that the surname originates in the medieval name Loberto, which together with the variants Luberto, Loperto and Luperto constitutes an archaism of the name Roberto. In archaic onomastics the substitution of r by l was frequent, a phenomenon documented also in pairs such as Riccardo/Liccardo or Raineri/Laineri. That medieval name would in turn derive from the Frankish name Lucebert, Latinized as Lubertus.

F. De Laurentiis, by contrast, proposes as its base the name Alberto, of Germanic origin, whether as a reduction of Adalberto —"of bright (berht) nobility (adal)"— or as a continuation of the Germanic name Alberht, which would mean "all (ala) bright (berht)".

According to Rossoni, the surname has a presence in the Ferrara area, in Puglia —especially in Canosa di Puglia—, in Calabria, in the province of Chieti, in the Rome area and in Campania.