Tobermacduagh, from the Irish tobar, meaning well, and Mac Duach, referring to Saint Colman Mac Duach, the seventh-century bishop and hermit whose memory is woven into the landscape of south Galway. Holy wells dedicated to Colman are not unusual in this part of the country, but the plural here is notable: not one well but wells, suggesting a site of some complexity and, likely, sustained devotion over many centuries.

Colman Mac Duach is closely associated with the Burren and the diocese of Kilmacduagh, whose ruined cathedral and famously leaning round tower stand a short distance to the south-east. Tradition holds that he lived as a hermit in a cave at Keelhilla in the Burren before being drawn back into ecclesiastical life, and the landscape around Lurgan sits within the broader territory that his cult shaped during the early medieval period. Holy wells in Ireland were places of pattern, that is, a local devotional gathering, typically held on a saint's feast day, which involved prayers, the circuit of the well on foot, and sometimes the tying of cloth or the leaving of small offerings on nearby bushes or stones. Whether the wells at Lurgan were the focus of such a pattern is not recorded here, but their dedication to Mac Duach places them within a tradition that persisted in this region long after the medieval church had faded into ruin.