In Irish placename tradition, "cill" denotes a church or early ecclesiastical enclosure, and the James that follows most likely refers to a dedication, suggesting that somewhere in this corner of County Kilkenny there was once a sacred site old enough to shape the landscape around it. The graveyard that survives here is, in many cases, all that remains above ground of such foundations, the church itself long since reduced to rubble or absorbed into the earth, while the burial ground continues in its quiet function, sometimes for centuries after the building it served has vanished entirely.