Locally it is Tober Naomh Leigion, sometimes rendered Tobar Naomh Eléan, and in other sources it appears as St Helen's or Helena's well. Yet a separate tradition recorded in 1938 from Knightstown school calls it St William's Well, listing it as one of four holy wells on the island alongside St Brendan's in Corobeg, St Dererca's in Ballymanagh, and St Finian's in Glanleam. A single site, several saints, and a small wooden cross that once served as its only marker: the well sits quietly at the edge of a well-populated sacred landscape.

Holy wells, typically natural springs venerated over centuries for their association with a particular saint, were gathering points for prayer, pilgrimage, and the carrying out of ritual circuits known as rounds. This one on Valentia appears in folklore collected between 1934 and 1938 as part of the Irish Schools' Collection, a nationwide project in which schoolchildren recorded local traditions from older community members. A pupil from Cahersiveen school noted the well in the townland of Laharan, a place name glossed in the same account as meaning "the half land". An earlier reference from 1911 by Delap records the small wooden cross that then marked it, while a concrete niche was also built above the well at some point, providing a modest architectural frame to what is otherwise a simple spring. Rice, writing in 1976, preserves the St Helen's or Helena's identification, suggesting that the saint's name attached to the site had already shifted or blurred across generations.