The Kerry Kilfenora is quieter about its existence. The place name itself is revealing: Cill Fhionnúrach, sometimes rendered as the church of Fionnúr, points to an early ecclesiastical foundation, the kind of small, locally significant site that once dotted the Irish landscape in considerable numbers and has since slipped from general notice.

The "kil" prefix, from the Irish cill meaning a church or cell, frequently marks early Christian foundations associated with a named saint or local figure. In Kerry, many such sites survived as graveyards long after any church building had vanished, the land continuing in funerary use by local communities across successive centuries. The graveyard at Kilfenora follows this pattern, occupying ground that almost certainly predates any surviving visible structure, its boundaries likely shaped by the footprint of a much earlier enclosure.