Mount Everest

Mount Everest

 

Mount Everest (Nepali: सगरमाथा, romanized: Sagarmāthā; Tibetan: Chomolungma ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ; Chinese: 珠穆朗玛峰; 

pinyin: Zhūmùlǎngmǎ Fēng)

 

is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point. 

 

Its elevation (snow height) of 8,848.86 m (29,031.7 ft) was most recently established in 2020 by the Chinese and Nepali authorities.

 

 

 

 

Everest-Prayer-flags

 

 

Name

 

The name "Mount Everest" was first proposed in this 1856 speech, later published in 1857, in which the mountain was first confirmed as the world's highest

 

The Tibetan name for Everest is Qomolangma (ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ, lit. "Holy Mother"). The name was first recorded with a Chinese transcription on the 1721 Kangxi Atlas during the reign of Emperor Kangxi of Qing China, and then appeared as Tchoumour Lancma on a 1733 map published in Paris by the French geographer D'Anville based on the former map.

 It is also popularly romanised as Chomolungma and (in Wylie) as Jo-mo-glang-ma. The official Chinese transcription is 珠穆朗玛峰 (t 珠穆朗瑪峰), whose pinyin form is Zhūmùlǎngmǎ Fēng. While other Chinese names exist, including Shèngmǔ Fēng (t 聖母峰, s 圣母峰, lit. "Holy Mother Peak"), these names largely phased out from May 1952 as the Ministry of Internal Affairs of China issued a decree to adopt 珠穆朗玛峰 as the sole name  (romanised: Mount Qomolangma). Documented local names include "Deodungha" ("Holy Mountain"), but it is unclear whether it is commonly used.

 

In 1849, the British survey wanted to preserve local names if possible (e.g., Kangchenjunga and Dhaulagiri), and Andrew Waugh, the British Surveyor General of India argued that he could not find any commonly used local name, as his search for a local name was hampered by Nepal and Tibet's exclusion of foreigners. Waugh argued that because there were many local names, it would be difficult to favour one name over all others; he decided that Peak XV should be named after British surveyor Sir George Everest, his predecessor as Surveyor General of India.  Everest himself opposed the name suggested by Waugh and told the Royal Geographical Society in 1857 that "Everest" could not be written in Hindi nor pronounced by "the native of India". Waugh's proposed name prevailed despite the objections, and in 1865, the Royal Geographical Society officially adopted Mount Everest as the name for the highest mountain in the world.

 

 The modern pronunciation of Everest (/ˈɛvərɪst/) is different from Sir George's pronunciation of his surname (/ˈiːvrɪst/ EEV-rist).  In the late 19th century, many European cartographers incorrectly believed that a native name for the mountain was Gaurishankar, a mountain between Kathmandu and Everest.

 

In the early 1960s, the Nepali government coined the Nepali name Sagarmāthā (IAST transcription) or Sagar-Matha (सगर-माथा, [sʌɡʌrmatʰa], lit. "goddess of the sky" which means "the Head in the Great Blue Sky", being derived from सगर (sagar), meaning "sky", and माथा (māthā), meaning "head".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mount Everest via South Col

 

 

 

Everest-Prayer-flags

 

 

 

 

Christmas on Everest

Jan 29, 2020

THE JAPAN TIMES

• BY OSCAR BOYD

Majestic: Moonrise above Mount Everest and Lhotse, as seen from Gokyo Ri.