The name Doonmore itself is a clue to the site's presence, derived from the Irish Dún Mór, meaning great fort, a place-name that often marks where an earthwork of some significance once commanded attention.

Ringforts, known in Irish as ráths when formed from earthen banks and ditches, were the standard farmstead of early medieval Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Tens of thousands were built across the island, and Clare alone contains a remarkable concentration of them. They were not primarily military installations, despite the word fort, but enclosed farmsteads, their circular banks providing security for livestock and family against the ordinary hazards of rural life. The ráth form, distinguished from stone-built cashels, used raised earthen ramparts, sometimes with a fosse or outer ditch, to define a roughly circular space within which a household would have gone about its daily business. That such a place carries the name Doonmore suggests it may have been considered locally significant, perhaps larger or more prominent than the surrounding examples, though the specifics of this particular site remain to be fully documented.