The word "bawn" refers to a walled enclosure, typically of stone, used in early Irish and later medieval contexts to contain livestock, defend a dwelling, or mark the boundaries of a settlement. That this particular place has bawn folded into its very placename suggests the enclosure here was once significant enough to define the landscape around it, at least in the minds of those who named it.

Beyond the placename itself, the site is recorded as an archaeological monument, meaning it has been identified and catalogued as a feature of historical interest in Kerry's wider landscape of early settlement remains. Enclosures of this kind are found across Ireland and vary considerably in date and purpose, from prehistoric ringforts used as farmsteads to later bawn walls associated with tower houses or plantation-era fortifications. Without more detailed survey information currently available for this particular site, it is difficult to say precisely which tradition it belongs to, though the concentration of such monuments across Kerry points to a deeply layered history of enclosed habitation in the region.

The name Bawnaskehy itself rewards a little attention. In Irish townland nomenclature, compound names often preserve traces of landscape features, family associations, or former land uses that have long since disappeared from the surface. Here, the bawn element has outlasted whatever physical structure it once described, surviving in the spoken and written name of the land long after the walls themselves may have fallen or been absorbed into field boundaries. That kind of persistence, quiet and unremarked, is not unusual in the Irish countryside.