An Coireán

Waterville's Irish name, An Coireán, means "the little cauldron" or "little whirlpool", usually taken to describe the shape of Ballinskelligs Bay. In English the village was once known as Currane, after the lake beside it. It sits on a narrow strip of land on the Iveragh Peninsula, with Lough Currane to the east and Ballinskelligs Bay to the west, joined by the short Currane River. The village is on the Ring of Kerry and at the edge of the Kerry Gaeltacht.

In 1884 the Commercial Cable Company, founded by John W. Mackay and James Gordon Bennett Jr., opened its station at Waterville. Its cable ran to Canso in Nova Scotia, with onward links to England and France, and Waterville became the company's main European hub. At its height in the 1890s and early 1900s the station employed around 300 people, many of them staff who came from abroad and settled in the village. During the Civil War, on 7 August 1922, anti-Treaty forces seized the station and cut the Paris–New York link. Traffic continued until the cables were superseded by satellite systems in the early 1960s. In 2000 the South Kerry cable stations received an IEEE International Milestone.

Charlie Chaplin first came to Waterville with his family in 1959 and returned every year for more than ten years, usually staying at the Butler Arms Hotel, which opened in 1884. His statue stands on the seafront, and since 2011 the Charlie Chaplin Comedy Film Festival has brought screenings and street events to the village each August.