Derived from the Irish fearann an teampaill, meaning "the land of the church", it is the kind of place-name that outlasts the structure it describes, preserving the memory of a religious site long after the building itself has crumbled or been forgotten. A church recorded here points to a history of settlement and worship in this corner of Kilkenny, though the details of its form, its age, and its dedication remain to be fully documented.

The name pattern is common across Ireland, a legacy of the early medieval and later medieval church's deep imprint on the landscape. Parishes, monastic cells, and local chapels were once so numerous that whole townlands were defined by their proximity to a place of worship. In many cases, what survives is a roofless shell, a scatter of worked stone, or simply a raised area of ground where the foundations lie beneath the grass. Whether the church at Farrantemple fits any of these descriptions, and when it was built or fell out of use, is not yet a matter of publicly available record.