Tobergalliagh, near Ballinvoy in County Mayo, contains the Irish word tobar, meaning a well, most likely a holy well of the kind that dots the Irish countryside in considerable numbers. Holy wells were, and in some places remain, sites of popular devotion, often associated with a local saint or with curative properties attributed to the water. The second element, galliagh, may derive from cailleach, an old Irish word for a veiled woman or hag, a figure that appears across Gaelic mythology and folklore as a personification of winter, sovereignty, or ancient female power. A well bearing that name carries a suggestion of pre-Christian significance that was never entirely smoothed over by later religious use.

Beyond the name itself, the documentary record for this particular site is presently thin. It is listed as a monument in County Mayo, situated in the townland of Ballinvoy, but the detailed record has not yet been made publicly available. What that absence quietly signals is how many such places across Ireland remain formally unexamined, known locally, occasionally visited, but not yet fully drawn into the written record. Holy wells of this type were typically focal points for pattern days, annual gatherings on a saint's feast day that combined prayer, circumambulation of the well, and social occasion. Many fell out of regular use during the nineteenth century, though some retained a quiet following well into the twentieth.