The "Kil" prefix derives from the Irish "cill", meaning a church or monastic cell, a naming pattern found across Ireland wherever early Christian communities put down roots. The second element likely refers to a personal name, suggesting the site was once associated with a particular saint or founder, though the identity of that figure has grown obscure over the centuries.

The ruins stand in a landscape that was, during the early medieval period, densely organised around local church sites serving dispersed rural communities. These small parish churches, often built initially in timber before being rebuilt in stone from the Romanesque period onward, formed the backbone of religious and social life in Gaelic Ireland. Kilfiddane would have functioned within this kind of local network, serving the people of its immediate territory. The Moyfadda townland sits within the broader geography of Clare, a county whose ecclesiastical history is closely tied to the monastic traditions of Munster, and whose landscape still holds a remarkable number of such ruined early church sites, many of them associated with burial grounds that remained in use long after the churches themselves fell out of regular worship.