Cill Damhnait, which translates roughly as the church of Damhnait, or Dympna, links this site to a female saint whose cult was centred in the region and whose name appears across a scatter of ecclesiastical placenames in the west of Ireland. The cill element, from the Latin cella, was used in early Christian Ireland to denote a monastic cell or small church, and its survival in a placename is often the only surface trace of a foundation that may go back to the sixth or seventh century.

Saint Damhnait, also rendered as Davnat or Dympna, is associated in Irish hagiographical tradition with Tedavnet in County Monaghan, though her name and dedications appear in Mayo as well, suggesting either the spread of her cult or the existence of more than one local tradition attached to the name. Graveyards bearing cill names in Ireland frequently overlie or adjoin the sites of early monastic enclosures, the original circular boundary of which can sometimes still be read in the curve of a field boundary or a road. Whether that is the case at Cill Damhnait in Mayo is not currently documented in any available published source, which itself says something about how many such places remain only lightly examined.