The name alone raises questions. A chair suggests something deliberately shaped, a natural rock formation worked into a seat, or perhaps a landscape feature that acquired the name through local tradition and the long association of a powerful family with the land around it. The de Burgh family, who held the title Marquis of Clanricard, were one of the most prominent Anglo-Norman dynasties in Connacht, and their presence shaped the political and physical landscape of County Galway for centuries. Whether this particular feature is geological, archaeological, or simply a piece of folklore made solid, the name preserves something of that connection between aristocratic identity and territory.

The Clanricard title itself has a long and tangled history. The de Burgh earldom of Clanricard dates to the sixteenth century, elevated to a marquessate in 1789, and the family's seat at Portumna Castle in east Galway made them a dominant force in the region well into the nineteenth century. Features named after powerful landowners, whether natural rock seats, viewpoints, or boundary stones, were common ways of marking territory and embedding authority into the landscape. A "chair" of this kind would typically be a formation from which a lord might survey his lands, either literally or in local imagination, the kind of place that accumulates stories over generations even as the original significance fades.