The name likely derives from the Irish "An Cheathrú Mhór", meaning the great quarter-land, a unit of land division that was once a practical measure of territory in Gaelic Ireland. That linguistic residue is sometimes the most tangible thing left when a recorded monument has not yet been fully documented in the public record.

Oughterard itself sits at the eastern end of Lough Corrib, one of the largest lakes in Ireland, and the broader area around Canrawer falls within a landscape that has been continuously settled since prehistory. The region is thick with ringforts, enclosures, and other earthworks typical of early medieval rural Ireland, many of them now reduced to faint cropmarks or low earthen banks at the edges of fields. A ringfort, to give the term its due, was a circular enclosed farmstead, usually dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches and serving as both a domestic and a defensive space for a farming family and their livestock. Without more specific detail confirmed for this particular site, what can be said with confidence is that Canrawer's place within the Oughterard townland cluster puts it squarely in territory where such remains are not uncommon, and where the ground, if you know how to read it, tends to hold more than first appears.