The place is simply called Friary, as though the building that once stood or still stands there was so dominant a presence that no other descriptor was ever needed. That kind of naming tends to happen when a structure has shaped a landscape for centuries, becoming the landmark by which everything else is orientated.

Franciscan friaries were established across Ireland from the thirteenth century onwards, often in towns and along river routes, serving as centres of learning, burial, and pastoral care for the surrounding population. The Franciscan order, founded by Francis of Assisi in the early thirteenth century, spread rapidly through the medieval world, and Ireland proved particularly receptive to their presence. Many of their Irish houses were suppressed during the sixteenth-century Reformation, though communities often persisted informally or returned in later generations. The site at Friary in County Galway carries a preservation order, indicating that whatever survives above or below ground is considered significant enough to warrant legal protection under Irish national monuments legislation.

Beyond that official recognition, the documentary record for this particular site is thin, which itself says something. Places absorbed so thoroughly into local geography that the townland inherits their name tend to exist at the edges of the written archive, known more through tradition and landscape than through deed or chronicle.