The name Cartronsheela is itself quietly arresting. Cartron derives from the Irish ceathhrú, a land division equal to roughly a quarter of a larger unit, commonly used in Connacht to describe smallholdings carved out of older territorial arrangements. Sheela, meanwhile, almost certainly refers to a personal name or a reference to the sheela-na-gig tradition, those carved female figures of uncertain religious or apotropaic purpose found on churches and castles across Ireland. Whether the townland preserves a memory of an actual figure or simply inherited a name through generations of usage is not recorded.