The name Knockyclovaun itself likely derives from the Irish, with "cnoc" pointing to a hill or raised ground, and the mound's formal classification as an archaeological monument means it has been noted, mapped, and assigned a record, even if the details of what it actually is remain largely undocumented in any publicly accessible form.

Mounds of this kind in County Clare can represent a wide range of origins. Some are natural glacial features that were later adapted or venerated. Others are burial mounds, known as barrows, raised over the dead during the Bronze Age or earlier. Still others may be the remains of a rath or ringfort, the circular earthwork enclosures that once served as farmsteads across early medieval Ireland, their banks and ditches gradually softened by centuries of weather and agriculture into something that reads, from a distance, simply as a low rise in a field. Without further investigation, the mound at Knockyclovaun remains in this ambiguous category, a feature whose form has outlasted any clear record of its function or date.