Derived from the Irish "bábhún buí", meaning yellow enclosure or yellow bawn, it points directly to the kind of feature that once defined this corner of County Kerry. A bawn, in the Irish context, typically refers to a defensive enclosure wall, often associated with a tower house or early modern settlement, though the term was also applied loosely to older ring-shaped boundaries of various periods and purposes. That the settlement took its name from such a structure suggests the enclosure here was once prominent enough to organise the landscape around it.

Beyond the eloquence of the placename itself, detailed information about this particular site remains sparse. What can be said is that enclosures of this kind in Kerry range considerably in date and function, from prehistoric ringforts used as farmsteads to medieval bawns built in the era of Hiberno-Norman and Gaelic lordship. The soil and field boundaries of Kerry have absorbed and obscured many such structures over centuries of agriculture, and a site that gave its name to a townland was not always one that survived visibly above ground.