The word "pallas" derives from the Irish "pálas", itself borrowed from the Latin "palatium", meaning a fortified residence or palace. In an Irish context it most commonly refers to a tower house or defended enclosure of medieval or early modern date, the kind of structure that once marked the seat of a local lord and gave a settlement its character and its name. That a place should be named after such a structure, and that the structure's name should then be absorbed so thoroughly into the landscape that it now labels both the monument and the townland containing it, is a pattern repeated across Ireland, though it rarely announces itself quite so openly as here.