In Irish, "tobar" means well, and the second element most likely refers to the fairy mounds or supernatural associations common to spring sites across the west of Ireland. That a field enclosure should survive here, formally recorded as an archaeological monument, suggests something older still beneath the ordinary appearance of the land.

An enclosure of this kind typically refers to a roughly circular or oval area defined by an earthen bank, a fosse, or a combination of both, and such features in the Irish landscape span an enormous range of date and function. Some are the remains of ringforts, the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland; others may be earlier, connected to ceremonial or funerary use in the prehistoric period. Without more detail specific to this site, the enclosure at Tobernaveen sits in that particular category of monument that the Irish countryside holds in some number: something clearly deliberate, clearly old, and not yet fully explained.