Togher Patrick takes its identity from two converging ideas: a togher, in the Irish tradition, is a causeways or trackway, typically constructed from timber and brushwood laid across boggy or waterlogged ground to allow passage where the land would otherwise swallow a traveller whole, and the Patrick element almost certainly ties it to the cult of St Patrick, whose journeys through the Irish landscape left a trail of named sites, holy wells, and pilgrimage routes across every province. The combination suggests this was no ordinary path, but one with a devotional purpose, a route used by pilgrims moving through difficult terrain towards some sacred destination or stopping point.

Toghers as a class of monument are among the more quietly remarkable survivals in the Irish archaeological record. Some date back thousands of years, preserved almost accidentally by the anaerobic conditions of the bog that would have made them necessary in the first place. The association with St Patrick in place names across Connacht often reflects medieval or early Christian layering onto much older landscape features, a process by which ancient trackways and natural landmarks were absorbed into the geography of pilgrimage and local devotion. In a county as saturated with Patrician lore as Mayo, where Croagh Patrick dominates the sacred calendar to this day, a togher bearing his name along the Mace peninsula would fit neatly into that broader pattern of movement and veneration across wet ground.