Ltd is the short written form of Limited. It sits after a company name — Chen Trading Ltd, Greenfield Books Ltd — and tells you the business is a limited company: if the company fails, the owners only lose what they put into it, not their whole private fortune. Though actually, almost nobody says “Ltd” out loud as a word. People read the name and skip it, or they say “limited”. You write it with a capital L; older British style adds a full stop (Ltd.), and many signs now drop the stop. This Ltd lives on letters, contracts, shop fronts and company lists, especially in British and Commonwealth English. American names more often use Inc. or LLC. It is not the everyday adjective limited (“a limited time”); that limited is a different use, even though the letters look the same.