The scholars consulted agree that this surname is of ethnonymic type: it designates someone who was native of or coming from Padua. All the variants derive from the demonym padovano.

E. Rossoni specifies the geographical distribution of the main variants: Padovan is typically proper to Veneto; Padovani is widely diffused in Veneto, Lombardy, and Emilia-Romagna; while Padovano is concentrated in Apulia and Campania, in southern Italy.

E. De Stefani adds that the surname is present throughout the Italian peninsula, with a predominance of the truncated forms in northeastern Italy, in the regions of Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and Trentino-Alto Adige. He also notes that Padua is known as the city of Saint Anthony — venerated as Saint Anthony of Padua — a fact relevant to understanding the wide recognition of the base place name. De Stefani further documents the presence of the surname at Amaro, a locality in Carnia, the mountainous area of northern Friuli in the province of Udine, from at least the end of the sixteenth century, attesting to its early transformation into a surname in that region.

It is recorded that Padovan functions as a regional form of Padovano.