What's in a name?

I find the origin of place names very intriguing and it so happens to be that both Tactic and its departamento Alta Verapaz (the equivalent of a state in the US) both have interesting stories.

The name Tactic is from the Poqomchi’ language but morphed into its current form and (mis)spelling after the arrival of the Spanish who couldn’t pronounce the name correctly. Taq in Poqomchi’ means “let’s go” or alternatively “the.” (Taq is one of the few words I know in Poqom and it still makes my women laugh every time I use it). Tik in Poqom is “peach” or “peach trees.” So in its current form, Tactic signifies “let’s go to the peach trees.” However, the earliest name the Mayans used for Tactic was Pantaqtik with Pan signifying “among.” So with taq being translated as “the” in this case, the original Mayan name for Tactic meant “among the peach trees.” The irony in the significance of this name is that there is not a single peach tree left in Tactic. Although I don’t know how it would translate into Poqomchi’, perhaps a more fitting name for Tactic would be “let’s go to the peach trees and cut them all down.”
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The name Alta Verapaz has its own interesting history. The Spanish Conquest of Guatemala began in 1523 under the leadership of Pedro de Alvarado. Alvarado entered Guatemala along the Pacific Coast through Mexico and set about brutally and ruthlessly conquering the various Mayan tribes of the Western Highlands. Although Alvarado only had 300 soldiers and 120 horsemen, the large Mayan tribes were no match to for advanced weaponry of the Spanish, and the army rather easily swept across the countryside. Not until the Spanish reached the area around what is present day Cobán and Salamá did Alvarado meet a foe he could not overcome. The Achi, Q’eqchi’, and Poqomchi’ tribes fought so fiercely that Alvarado eventually gave up trying to conquer the area, naming it tierra de guerra, “the land of war.”

At this point the Catholic Church struck a deal with the conquistadors asking for five years to bring the area under control without the presence of any soldiers. In 1537 Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas along with three other friars set about befriending the Mayans and converting them to Catholicism. Within three years Las Casas succeeded in bringing the Mayans under the Spanish crown, and the area was renamed Verapaz which is short for “verdadera paz” or “true peace.” Much later the area was split into two departamentos named Alta (Upper) Verapaz and Baja (Lower) Verapaz. There is a town in northern Alta Verapaz named after Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, the “Apostle of the Mayans,” which, in another slight irony, used to be the home of my sitemate until the townspeople tried to lynch the director of her schools, and she had to be evacuated. Alta Casipaz?