In Irish placename convention, "rath" denotes a ringfort, one of those circular earthen enclosures that were the standard form of rural settlement across Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. That a townland should be named after one suggests this particular site was prominent enough, or enduring enough, to organise the landscape around it.

Ringforts, known variously as raths, lios, or cashels depending on their construction, were typically the farmsteads of free farming families. They consisted of a raised circular area enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, occasionally with a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage, dug beneath for storage or refuge. Kerry has an unusually dense concentration of these monuments, a reflection of the county's relatively undisturbed agricultural landscape and the slow pace at which intensive modern farming eroded earthworks that elsewhere were long since levelled. The rath at Rathanny sits within that broader pattern, a quiet survival in a county full of them, though the specific details of its dimensions, condition, and any associated features remain to be documented in accessible form.