Most holy wells in Ireland carry names freighted with saints, blessings, or miraculous cures. This one, tucked into a south-facing slope at Shanakill in County Waterford, appears to have been named for something considerably less appealing. The Ordnance Survey recorded it as Tobar an Aisig, a name that translates, at least plausibly, as the well of vomiting.

The name appears on both the 1840 and 1925 editions of the OS six-inch map, suggesting it was stable enough across nearly a century to be considered the accepted local designation rather than a cartographer's error or a passing joke. What the name actually refers to is less clear. It may point to a medicinal or purgative use, the kind of grimly practical function that wells were sometimes put to before modern medicine, or it may preserve some older folk memory that has since been entirely lost. What can be said with confidence is that there is no evidence of veneration at the site, none of the pattern days, votive offerings, or saint's associations that characterise the holy well tradition found across much of rural Ireland. The well itself is concrete-lined and covered with a slab, a functional rather than ceremonial structure.