Eochair Na Gcailleach translates roughly from the Irish as "the key of the old women" or "the key of the hags", a phrase that carries the particular charge of Irish placenames in which folklore, geography, and memory have compressed into a few syllables. At this location, a hut site has been recorded, a remnant of early human settlement that would once have been a shelter or dwelling, its walls likely low and curved, built from whatever stone or sod the land offered.

Hut sites of this kind are scattered across the west of Ireland, survivals from a broad span of prehistory and early medieval life. They range from simple circular structures used by farmers or seasonal herders to more substantial dwellings associated with settled communities. The word "cailleach" in Irish placenames often points to an older layer of meaning, referring to supernatural female figures associated with landscape, weather, and the shaping of the land itself. Whether the name here preserves a fragment of local legend, a memory of hermit women, or simply a descriptive term that has lost its original context, it is the kind of detail that archaeologists and folklorists tend to treat with equal seriousness. Mayo, with its exposed bogland and ancient field systems, holds a remarkable density of such early structures, many of them still incompletely studied.