The 19th-century Ordnance Survey of Ireland settled on 'Foaty' as the spelling. The locals settled on 'Fota.' Both are still in legal use - Foaty is the statutory form. The origin of the name is contested. Some scholars trace it to Hiberno-Norse - Old Norse 'oy' meaning island, attached to a first element that might mean 'foot' (fodr oy, 'foot island,' from its position at the mouth of the River Lee). Other authorities favour the Irish 'fod te,' 'warm soil,' the same word the Smith-Barrys later seized on as marketing for their gardens. Either way, Fota is an island of two townlands, both called Foaty, attached by causeway to the mainland and by a road bridge to its larger neighbour Great Island.

The Smith-Barry family built the current house in the early 19th century as a Regency mansion of over seventy rooms. Dorothy Bell, daughter of Arthur Smith-Barry, 1st Baron Barrymore, was the last family member to live there - she died in 1975, and the estate was sold to University College, Cork. During the late 20th century the house fell into disrepair, culminating in the collapse of a ceiling that closed it to the public. EU, Irish government and private funding paid for a restoration that reopened the house in early 2002. In December 2007 the Irish Heritage Trust took over. The house is open to visitors today, the rooms restored to roughly their 19th-century arrangement, the kitchen gardens and Victorian working garden brought back to life.

The Fota arboretum was John Smith-Barry's project from the 1840s, and his successors continued it through the 19th and 20th centuries. Plants arrived from the great plant-hunting expeditions of the Victorian era - specimens from Asia, South America, the Pacific coast of northwest America - and the Smith-Barrys grew them well-spaced so each could develop its full character. The collection now includes rare and exotic shrubs and trees you would not expect to thrive in Ireland - magnolias, palms, eucalypts, southern beeches - alongside an extensive rose garden, walled garden and terraces. By the 1990s the arboretum had fallen into disrepair through underfunding. The Irish state took control in 1996. The Office of Public Works and Irish Heritage Trust have administered it together since 2007.

In 1979, when Dublin Zoo reached the limit of what it could do on its existing site, the director proposed creating a wildlife park instead. The Zoological Society of Ireland accepted. University College, Cork - which had just acquired Fota - offered the land free under a licence agreement. Fundraising committees set up in Dublin and Cork raised the money from public subscriptions, with only a perimeter-fence grant from Bord Failte. The first animals arrived in late 1982. President Patrick Hillery opened Fota Wildlife Park in the summer of 1983. The design was radical: instead of fenced cages, most animals were allowed to roam across more than 200,000 square metres of mature grassland. Cheetahs and other predators still need enclosures. But the giraffes, zebras, ostriches and antelope walk where they want to. By 2017 the park drew 455,559 visitors and was the eleventh most popular paid attraction in Ireland.

The 780-acre Fota Island Resort, originally the Smith-Barry demesne, now contains three par-71-or-better championship golf courses called Deerpark, Belvelly and Barryscourt - golf has been played on the island since 1886. The course was redeveloped in 1993 by the Irish Ryder Cup player Christy O'Connor Junior and the two-time British Amateur champion Peter McEvoy, and it has since hosted the Irish Open three times - 2001, 2002 and 2014. In 2015 the Wildlife Park opened a 27-acre Asian Sanctuary with enclosures for Sumatran tigers, Indian rhinos, lion-tailed macaques and Asiatic lions. Fota railway station, on the Cork-Cobh line since 1865, brings visitors directly. The road from Carrigtwohill on the R624 brings cars. The Belvelly Bridge, just south of the island, then carries them on to Great Island and Cobh.