The place is recorded under at least four distinct medieval spellings, among them Kyllmeyneayn and Kyllmaneayn, before settling into the modern form Kilnanare, which some scholars believe is a corruption of an older Irish name, Cill-na-nAedhán, meaning something like "the church of the Aedhans". That the civil parish name on Ordnance Survey maps may quietly misrepresent its own origins gives the site an oddly provisional quality, as though it never quite agreed on what it was called.

The church itself sits in the northern half of a graveyard in the barony of Magunihy, Co. Kerry, and is thought to stand on or near the site of an even earlier building. In the medieval period it was impropriate to the priory of Killaha, meaning its tithes and revenues were assigned to that religious house rather than to a parish priest. What survives today is a rectangular structure, roughly 16 metres along its longer axis, though only the south and west walls still stand to any appreciable height; the north and east survive only as foundations. A pointed doorway arch that was still described in 1841 has since collapsed entirely. More rewarding is a surviving window in the south wall, fitted with a cusped ogee-headed light, a late medieval decorative form in which the arch curves outward before coming to a point, producing a delicate S-shaped profile. Beside it, partially swallowed by overgrowth, is a small aumbry niche, a recessed wall cupboard once used to store liturgical vessels. The interior holds numerous burials, and associated with the site are two stone sculptures and several loose architectural fragments whose precise origins are unrecorded.