Longford is a county in the middle of the Republic of Ireland — the south of the island, not Northern Ireland. The county town has the same name. It is inland and quite small; Irish people know it, but many learners have never heard it. Say it like LONG-fəd. The spelling looks English, as if it were “long” plus “ford” (a shallow place to cross a river), and some English places really do have that story. Though actually, for this Irish county the name comes from Irish an Longfort, “the camp” or “the stronghold.” English writers spelled the Irish name so that it looked like an English place name. So the tidy picture of a long river crossing is the wrong story here.