In Irish, "oileán an caisleáin" means island of the castle, and An Cnoc Bán, the white hill, places it within a landscape where small, rocky outcrops and the ruins scattered across them are easy to overlook from the mainland.

The name itself is the most reliable piece of evidence available here. Castle islands of this type, scattered throughout Galway Bay and the inlets along the western seaboard, often preserve the remains of a tower house or fortified structure, sometimes reduced to little more than a grass-covered platform or a few courses of stone. In Connaught, such structures were frequently associated with the Burke family and other Gaelic or Anglo-Norman lords who used coastal and island positions to control sea routes and fishing territories during the medieval period. Whether that is the case here remains, for now, a matter of the name alone pointing the way.