>He objected to the naming on the grounds that "Everest" could not be easily written in Hindi nor pronounced by the local people.
He was more right than he could ever know.
edit- as some people are really struggling.
He was concerned the *locals* couldn't pronounce it
It gets names after him, and the the *entire world* pronounces it wrong.
That’s just one of the local names (in Tibetan). It is Sagarmatha in Nepali. It is strange that he would object on grounds of Hindi considering Everest doesn’t abut any Hindi speaking areas in South Asia
>proposed that it be named "after my illustrious predecessor", as it was "without any local name that we can discover" – the "native appellation, if it has any, will not very likely be ascertained before we are allowed to penetrate into Nepal". There were in fact several native names among the Nepalese and Tibetans, but those areas were closed off to the British at the time and people living further to the south of the Himalayas did not have a specific name for the peak
I like the story about native American tribes who inevitably called themselves The People and others were Fish Eaters, Those Who Smoke Dirt, Fat Heads, etc
Nations, as in first nations. We call ourselves in relation to the land and waters where we have lived for thousands of generations, and to distinguish ourselves from our relatives the non-humans. So, people of the river, people of the eastern door, people of the caribou. Our names for other Indigenous people may be different from the people themselves.
Literally every group of people did this. Names of people originate from the land they occupy, the traditions they observe, etc. No one said, “ah yes, we are the *checks notes* Magyars, long live our reign!”
“Matthias, wtf is a Magyar?!”
“It’s us, I just decided, for no reason at all!”
Great write up and explanation. I think he was referring to namings like "Comanche is derived from a Ute word meaning “anyone who wants to fight me all the time.”"
> Truly a missed opportunity to go with the first name instead of the lastname. Mt. Zebulon would be amazing.
What's funny is 'pike' is another name for a mountain or hill. So 'Zebulon Pike' would've worked just as well as 'Pike's Peak'.
Correct. I remember from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Some of the names never caught on, like Issachar and Gad.
Then there’s, like, Benjamin and Dan.
He had no *direct* connection:
“He was, however, responsible for hiring Andrew Scott Waugh, who made the first formal observations of the mountain, and Radhanath Sikdar, who calculated its height.”
Exactly. The post is worded in a really dumb way
It's like saying Washington has a really dumb name becuase George Washington never actually visited it. Yeah, we know, but he clearly was pretty involved in setting up the country that eventually colonized it
I thought this might be incorrect so TIL another thing.
George Vancouver's expedition returned in 1795, and Vancouver Washington and Vancouver BC are both named after him. Even more likely, Robert Gray named the Columbia River and is the first American to have circumnavigated the globe, both of which happened in the early/mid 1790s before Washington's death!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gray_(sea_captain)
It’s annoying living between both Vancouvers and someone says they’re going to Vancouver to visit their parents or something and you don’t know which one they’re taking about. I always assume the wrong one.
... I just learned Vancouver is two different cities.
Ugh.
I just didn't have much reason to pay attention, and every time I encountered both cities I just assumed I had misremembered where it was.
I mean, even "theory" is a pretty strong word. He knew there was stuff in that general direction, that's about it. You might as well say I know about a particular unnamed galaxy in theory because I know that the James Webb telescope exists and that it's out there taking pictures of far away shit I know nothing about.
That's not strictly true. Europeans had explored as far as the area of Washington in George Washington's lifetime, but it was only coastally.
We knew how large the Earth was, so we knew how far the US expanded to the US Western coast once we had reached the Pacific. They just didn't know much about the interior or specific details of the coast until much later.
The existence and general location of the Pacific coast was known, at least by some.
But still: why name something after someone against their own wishes? Seems like an unnecessary dick move. And if he was their boss why didn't they go with a name that was easy to pronounce in Hindi? Those are the two parts that are weird to me.
The worst example of this by fair is Chief Seattle who vehemently opposed naming a city after himself on the grounds his ghost would be woken constantly by uttering his name.
> why no one is questioning the “I’m not a herpetologist.”
He has zero connection to herpetology. He might object to being called a herpetologist. But, against his wishes, we're going to call him a herpetologist anyway.
That is the way this kind of thing works.
It's recording stuff like weather, flora & fauna at different altitudes, what the terrain looks like, that sort of thing. It's just recording data and insights to inform future expeditions so they're not blindsided by some stuff they could have prepped for if they knew in advance
He didn't hire a dude to just look at it and be like 'yep that's a mountain', he paid for a set of data
> 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
No no, it's both, maybe other lesser known names too. Himalayan region is huge and inhabited by various cultures with a number of languages. So it makes sense that it has different names in different languages.
I love dumb kid logic lol my old coach was named Coach Hughes. My friend in 3rd grade asked him:
Boy "why do they called you Hughes?"
Coach "uh, well that's what my parents named me"
Boy "I think it's because you're so big"
One of the memories from those young years I actually remember pol
And the local people didn't use that name for the longest time. Even back in the 90s most people in Nepal would call it Sagarmatha (which weirdly means the ocean's forehead but makes sense when you know it actually is a misspelling of Saragmatha which means the heaven's forehead)
Fun fact. The summit of Everest is made up of mineral limestone and was once the floor of an ocean. The Indian subcontinent collided with what's now Asia, and the resulting fold became the Himalayas. So in some abstract way, Everest can also be considered the ocean's forehead.
Wait, is this true?!
Edit: I just looked it up, and it's true. That is an absolutely mind blowing fact! I also learned that the Scandinavian Mountains are also part of that same range!
If you want you can hike the Appalachian Trail, continue it though Canada, to then go to Scotland and do the West Highland and Cape Wrath Trails and then switch over to Sweden and hike the Green Band.
Based on this, they aren't: https://www.oldest.org/nature/mountain-ranges/
Though that list doesn't have for example Karelides, an ancient mountain range in Sweden and Finland, that formed about 2 billion years ago.
Funner fact: Chimborazo's summit is the farthest point on the Earth's surface from the Earth's center making it the summit farthest out into space, and 1.5 km closer to the stars than Everest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimborazo
That is a fun fact. Thank you for sharing it. Here's one for you.
The mythical Mount Meru was said to be more than a million km high, and according to Hindu cosmology, was the link between the different planes of the universe. Its role is extremely similar to that of Yggdrasil from Norse cosmology, to the point where they may be derived from the same origin myth.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Meru
They still call it Sagarmatha. Its the nepali name. Both everest and sagarmatha are used depending on people and context. I don't think it means "ocean's forehead" in any way, because "saagar" means ocean *in Nepali language and in 'sagarmatha' its pronounced as "saw-gar", not "saagar". And apparently, "sagar" means "sky".
You're right about Sagar being the Sanskrit word for ocean. But it was also used to refer to the sky as it can be considered as an ocean of stars. Oceans are extremely prominent in Hindu cosmology, and are considered both a primordial source of life, and the link between different "worlds / dimensions".
As for saw-gar, East and North East India tend to convert the "a/aa/ae" sounds to an "au" sound. In effect, they're the same word pronounced in different ways.
Ocean's forehead is an accurate term if you consider the beliefs of the time, but a more literal meaning would be "heaven's forehead".
Edit: I should say Vedic cosmology, which since has evolved into Hindu cosmology.
To be fair, the name Everest has been in use longer than Sagarmatha. They came up with that name in the 60's. The name Everest came to use 100 years before that. Tibetan people have called the mountain Qomolangma (holy mother) since 1721 or probably even longer than that.
Incredible book imo. One takeaway I got from that book is that even the people who dream of climbing the mountain and who are obsessed with climbing the mountain understand that it is a ridiculous and stupid thing to want to do, yet they crave it anyway. I like how honest it is about how awful the entire experience climbing the mountain truly is.
So stressful!
Then I watched Meru (it’s on Amazon prime). Way less drama than what happened to those people on Everest. It’s only 3 people trying to get to the summit of another Himalayan peak. But pretty interesting. Mountain climbers have strong willpower and determination!
1996 was an absolute freak of an accident on Everest though. So many mistakes made to make that happen. Rob Hall being one of the most accomplished Everest climbers was so determined to get his client to the summit after previous failures that it cost him his life.
Other good climbing documentaries is Dawn Wall which I believe is on Disney+ and look up the Reel Rock series. It’s a bunch of short documentaries packed into one series of pro climbers climbing some crazy crap. It usually tours around the mountain film festivals.
I’m not a specialist on mountain climbing but no list of climbing documentaries is complete without a prominent mention of *Into the Void*, the British film of the true story of two climbers in South America in which one has to cut the rope on the other and let him fall to his death. However, plot twist!
(edit: *Touching the Void*, not Into the Void)
If you haven't, almost everyone in that book wrote their own versions and they're all rather interesting perspectives even though Krakauer is the best writer
We really lucked out on this dude having a kind of cool name. The darn British could and would have named the world's tallest mountain something like Mount Cockmore.
And when I was about 11/12 the town suffered massive flooding. Leading to an all boys classroom unable to stop laughing while we studied the "Cockermouth floodings in Cumbria".
Christ, that brings me back. We had a deputy head with a reputation for being the school hard case who taught in cockermouth before they happened. He did an assembly on the flooding. Woe to the lad that started giggling in front of him.
So apparently the Tibetan name for Mt. Everest is Chomolungma (also spelled Qomolangma), which means "Mother Goddess of the World." The Nepali name for Everest is Sagarmatha (or Jhomolongma, also spelled as Jhyamolungma), which most likely means "The Head of the Earth touching the Heaven."
As for China, as of 1952, the state officially named it Zhumulangma Feng (珠穆朗玛峰) on Chinese maps and in textbooks and other publications.
Then there's the anecdote about how in 1856 Waugh calculated the height of Mt. Everest to be exactly 29,000ft. However he didn't think anyone would believe such an exact round number, so he decided to add a couple feet to the measurement. Thus he became the first person to put two feet on the top of Mt. Everest.
I found an old article once that listed the six measurements they took. Seems that if you take the median, you'll get 29,000. If you take the mean, you'll get 29,002. So it wasn't quite as underhand as the anecdote suggests.
I would assume that most, if not all, mountains that are named after people would be named after people that have nothing to do with that specific mountain. At least Everest was working with the people involved in mapping that area.
Is it just my Australian bias? (Mount Kosciuszko, anyone?)
Most of the Cascade Range is named for people who were never even there. John Adams never went to Mount Adams, Peter Rainier never went to Mount Rainier, and John Glacier never even set foot in Washington, let alone visited Glacier Peak.
The native names sound so much cooler for a lot of the Cascades though.
Rainier- Tahoma,
Adams- Klickitat,
St Helens- Loowit,
Hood- Wy’east which is probably my favorite,
Baker- Koma Kulshan,
Mt Jefferson-Seekseekqua, also cool
Virginia is named after Queen Elizabeth 1st, the Virgin Queen.
So... If you think it bad that Victoria never saw those falls... Imagine being a virgin so hard they name a state after your virginity
> Imagine being a virgin so hard they name a state after your virginity
Queen Elizabeth I's famous virginity (or rather, her decision not to marry) was extremely voluntary. Her father had six wives and killed two of them, including her own mother, so the concept of marriage wasn't extremely positive for her. And, unlike today, if she had been married her husband would have, in practice, have had all the powers of a king, and she would have been relegated to being his obedient servant. But as a single woman she was able to hold all that power herself.
The virgin queen knew exactly what she was doing and didn't make any secret of it.
He just by chance had the perfect last name for the worlds highest mountain. Though my favourite mountain name of the 8000ers is K2. It just sounds badass.
I remember a news story in the 90s that said K2 was actually higher than Everest, based on new satellite measurements. Always wondered what happened about that. Everest is still reported as higher so obviously this wasn't the case.
Either that or there's some massive conspiracy involving Big Mountain.
Out of the 8,000 meter peaks surprisingly Everest is one of the safest ones. Don’t get me wrong you’re very close to death on any 8,000 meter peak, but Everest is so commercialized and largely recognized all the routes are really well mapped and known. K2 for example all the routes are less explored so theirs a lot more random and unknown to them.
still, "most safe" still leaves a percentage of deaths that is a lot of deaths for an essentially recreational activity. It's like the most safe gun to shoot yourself in the leg with.
Did you know there's actually three different answers to "What is the tallest mountain on Earth?"
It's the Mount Everest if you look at what's higher based on sea level ( 8848 meters high)
It's Mauna Kea if you measure a mountain from its base to the peak ( 10210 meters high, The Mauna Kea's base starts under sea level)
And it's the Chimborazo in Ecuador if you would measure from the center of the Earth. because the Earth is not a perfect sphere but more an oval shape. That means that you're further from the center when you're on the equator. Chimborazo is very close to the equator and thus has a higher peak measured from the center. (6263 meter from sea level)
Measuring the peak of a mountain from the center of the earth, is like measuring the length of your penis from the center of your anus. "Technically mine is bigger because of my long taint."
In other news, the Kuiper Belt was not discovered by Gerard Kuiper, he wasn't the first to describe it, and he was adamant that it didn't even exist (Leonard/Edgeworth were first to propose it, and Jewitt and Luu discovered the first object there.)
Pythagorus didn't invent the pythagorean theorem. It was well known to the Egyptians centuries before he was born.
Ptolemy didn't create the ptolemaic system. It predated him by 1000 years.
Things are rarely named for who created or discovered it.
It was actually common for nobels to pay mathematicians to discover something and *sell* it to them
Like l'hopital rule - it was by Johann Bernoulli (teacher of, well, euler) but he was sponsored regularly by l'hopital to solve maths problems. I guess you still needed to eat even if you were in the forefront of maths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_misnamed_theorems
>pythagorus didn't invent the pythagorean theorem. It was well known to the Egyptians centuries before he was born.
untrue. while the babylonians knew about some sets of pythagorean triples, there is little-to-no evidence that they had proof.
Prof. M. Berry once formulated the following two principles:
The Arnold Principle. If a notion bears a personal name, then this name is not the name of the discoverer.
The Berry Principle. The Arnold Principle is applicable to itself.
[src](https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html)
Also despite it not being pronounced that way. Apparently it was Eve-rest.
I'm surprised there isn't a bigger campaign to rename it. Sagarmatha is a perfectly good name, which is easily pronounced in English. Or Chomolungma.
His name is also pronounced Eve-rest, if memory serves.
Key: WHERE'S E'VEE REEST?
Pree zent.
GOD DAMN IT B'LAA-KÉ!!
DE-NICE?
AY-AY-RON
Principal O-Shag-Hennesy
Ya done fucked up A-A-Ron!
Ja-kwelin
the garden of eatin'
in a gadda da vida
>Sir George's surname is pronounced /ˈiːvrɪst/ ("EEV-rist")
It's more of eve-rist like wrist, at least, according to Qi.
>He objected to the naming on the grounds that "Everest" could not be easily written in Hindi nor pronounced by the local people. He was more right than he could ever know. edit- as some people are really struggling. He was concerned the *locals* couldn't pronounce it It gets names after him, and the the *entire world* pronounces it wrong.
Maybe it should go back to the local name Chomolungma.
That’s just one of the local names (in Tibetan). It is Sagarmatha in Nepali. It is strange that he would object on grounds of Hindi considering Everest doesn’t abut any Hindi speaking areas in South Asia
>proposed that it be named "after my illustrious predecessor", as it was "without any local name that we can discover" – the "native appellation, if it has any, will not very likely be ascertained before we are allowed to penetrate into Nepal". There were in fact several native names among the Nepalese and Tibetans, but those areas were closed off to the British at the time and people living further to the south of the Himalayas did not have a specific name for the peak
Sagarmatha is a pretty dope name.
Which kinda supports his objevtions as he has very little knowledge about the region they want to put his name to
Chomolungma?
yeah dont you remember that band? they sang that song "i get knocked down but i get up again you never gonna keep me down"
Pissing the mount away...
Green Boots: I get knocked down. I don't get up again...
Chomolungma nuts. Gottem.
Pretty sure they had Hindi back when he was alive so I'm guessing he knew exactly how right he was?
if the parent is to be believed, english speakers can't pronounce it either.
actually i believe hindi was invented a few years ago so that redditors could feel like they were making profundities.
You say “The Him-ollie-uz”, don’t you?
Sounds like a decent bloke, someone should name a mountain after him
Fun fact: Mount Everest is named after him!
Wow. Did he want that?
no :)
But did he deserve it?
Maybe? He sounds like a decent bloke.
He really does! They should name a mountain after him.
Have I got some news for you
What’s the news?
Sir George Everest was a decent bloke.
Ironically, the local name for it when translated means “Mounty McMountyface”
Well, when you have THE mountain at your doorstep, might as well call it "THE mountain" I guess.
I like the story about native American tribes who inevitably called themselves The People and others were Fish Eaters, Those Who Smoke Dirt, Fat Heads, etc
Nations, as in first nations. We call ourselves in relation to the land and waters where we have lived for thousands of generations, and to distinguish ourselves from our relatives the non-humans. So, people of the river, people of the eastern door, people of the caribou. Our names for other Indigenous people may be different from the people themselves.
Literally every group of people did this. Names of people originate from the land they occupy, the traditions they observe, etc. No one said, “ah yes, we are the *checks notes* Magyars, long live our reign!” “Matthias, wtf is a Magyar?!” “It’s us, I just decided, for no reason at all!”
> No one said, “ah yes, we are the *checks notes* Magyars, long live our reign!” That's me starting a new game of Civilization.
Great write up and explanation. I think he was referring to namings like "Comanche is derived from a Ute word meaning “anyone who wants to fight me all the time.”"
Pikes Peak in Colorado is named after Zebulon Pike who was obsessed with being the first to summit it but never could
What a name, Zebulon.
Truly a missed opportunity to go with the first name instead of the lastname. Mt. Zebulon would be amazing.
Dear god, imagine all the things that use Pike in the name in Colorado Springs suddenly having Zebulon instead.
TurnZebulon
Went fishing, caught a zebulon.
Would you consider this weapon a spear or a zebulon?
Captain Christopher Zebulon
Zebulon's Zenith
Sounds like a sequel to Dianetics
> Truly a missed opportunity to go with the first name instead of the lastname. Mt. Zebulon would be amazing. What's funny is 'pike' is another name for a mountain or hill. So 'Zebulon Pike' would've worked just as well as 'Pike's Peak'.
it's one of those fun old Bible names that rarely shows up.
One of Jacob's sons, I believe. Brother of Nephthalim.
Correct. I remember from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Some of the names never caught on, like Issachar and Gad. Then there’s, like, Benjamin and Dan.
Imagine your brothers being named cool shit like Issachar and Asher and Naphtali and you're just Dan.
Sounds like a Star Trek race
\- But, Captain, no ship has ever survived... \- Your concern is noted, Lieutenant. Set course for the Zebulon Nebula.
The Zebula
The Zebulon Nebulon
Shoulda gone with Mt. Zebulon
He should've just driven to the top like everyone else does.
He couldn't find it on Google Maps because it hadn't been named Pikes Peak yet, silly goose.
I summited that bitch in a minivan a few summers back. What a joke this Zebulon guy must have been
He had no *direct* connection: “He was, however, responsible for hiring Andrew Scott Waugh, who made the first formal observations of the mountain, and Radhanath Sikdar, who calculated its height.”
He was the surveyor general of India at the time and his team surveyed the mountain so they named it after their boss
Exactly. The post is worded in a really dumb way It's like saying Washington has a really dumb name becuase George Washington never actually visited it. Yeah, we know, but he clearly was pretty involved in setting up the country that eventually colonized it
> Yeah, we know, I didn’t know.
George Washington probably didn't even know Washington existed in anything but theory. The Lewis and Clark Expedition was a few years after his death.
I thought this might be incorrect so TIL another thing. George Vancouver's expedition returned in 1795, and Vancouver Washington and Vancouver BC are both named after him. Even more likely, Robert Gray named the Columbia River and is the first American to have circumnavigated the globe, both of which happened in the early/mid 1790s before Washington's death! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gray_(sea_captain)
It’s annoying living between both Vancouvers and someone says they’re going to Vancouver to visit their parents or something and you don’t know which one they’re taking about. I always assume the wrong one.
... I just learned Vancouver is two different cities. Ugh. I just didn't have much reason to pay attention, and every time I encountered both cities I just assumed I had misremembered where it was.
I find [Ontario, CA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario,_CA) even more annoying.
I mean, even "theory" is a pretty strong word. He knew there was stuff in that general direction, that's about it. You might as well say I know about a particular unnamed galaxy in theory because I know that the James Webb telescope exists and that it's out there taking pictures of far away shit I know nothing about.
That's not strictly true. Europeans had explored as far as the area of Washington in George Washington's lifetime, but it was only coastally. We knew how large the Earth was, so we knew how far the US expanded to the US Western coast once we had reached the Pacific. They just didn't know much about the interior or specific details of the coast until much later. The existence and general location of the Pacific coast was known, at least by some.
But still: why name something after someone against their own wishes? Seems like an unnecessary dick move. And if he was their boss why didn't they go with a name that was easy to pronounce in Hindi? Those are the two parts that are weird to me.
The worst example of this by fair is Chief Seattle who vehemently opposed naming a city after himself on the grounds his ghost would be woken constantly by uttering his name.
So he had a connection to it?
They later created a 20 mile cable to connect his grave to the mountain in order to overrule his objection
They were real assholes, huh?
“Look, you’re dealing with this mountain whether you like it or not”
[Drags his body up mtn; uses it as a trail marker.]
The mystery of green boots has been solved.
Everest? You mean that guy that doesn't want to name Everest after him? Lol fuck that guy, let's name it Everest.
“When do you rest?” “I don’t ever’rest.” “Heh.”
He never saw it but they buried him 20 miles away?
That was a joke. The article says he's buried in the UK.
Ok so you got the length of the cable wrong i think (i am not a herpetologist)
I love the "i think" implying you haven't completely ruled out the possibility of a 20 mile cable being long enough to connect the UK to mount everest
I’m confused why no one is questioning the “I’m not a herpetologist.”
Because we have no evidence that they are a herpetologist.
Sneaky snake indeed.
> why no one is questioning the “I’m not a herpetologist.” He has zero connection to herpetology. He might object to being called a herpetologist. But, against his wishes, we're going to call him a herpetologist anyway. That is the way this kind of thing works.
Well, clearly they’re not otherwise they would know, that’s the implication at I think. But I don’t know for sure, I’m not a xenobiologist.
Maybe it's really wide
What differentiates an observation and a "formal observation"? I'm sure locals had observed the mountain before.
Writing it down
It's recording stuff like weather, flora & fauna at different altitudes, what the terrain looks like, that sort of thing. It's just recording data and insights to inform future expeditions so they're not blindsided by some stuff they could have prepped for if they knew in advance He didn't hire a dude to just look at it and be like 'yep that's a mountain', he paid for a set of data
Mt Sikdar has a nice ring
Do you think the native people called it something before his team showed up or what
[Qomolangma](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Everest)
Oh shit really I thought it was Sagarmatha, I wonder where that came from. Maybe I got it mixed up with a different mountain
Qomolangma is Tibetan, the other is Nepali.
It’s is. Sagarmatha is it’s current name. Qomolangma was it’s first recorded name.
Is that what the Nepalese call it? The Tibetans still call it Qomolangma, as far as I know.
> 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
No no, it's both, maybe other lesser known names too. Himalayan region is huge and inhabited by various cultures with a number of languages. So it makes sense that it has different names in different languages.
As a kid I thought it was named so because it was the highest mountain ever, hence Mount Everest
As in ever, everer, the everest?
Exactly!
I love dumb kid logic lol my old coach was named Coach Hughes. My friend in 3rd grade asked him: Boy "why do they called you Hughes?" Coach "uh, well that's what my parents named me" Boy "I think it's because you're so big" One of the memories from those young years I actually remember pol
Some mountains seem to go on forever. Then there are those that go on foreverer. But this? This mountain goes on foreverest.
The biggest mountain, ever-est. It totally makes sense.
As an adult I still thought that, until today
And the local people didn't use that name for the longest time. Even back in the 90s most people in Nepal would call it Sagarmatha (which weirdly means the ocean's forehead but makes sense when you know it actually is a misspelling of Saragmatha which means the heaven's forehead)
Fun fact. The summit of Everest is made up of mineral limestone and was once the floor of an ocean. The Indian subcontinent collided with what's now Asia, and the resulting fold became the Himalayas. So in some abstract way, Everest can also be considered the ocean's forehead.
Something about the Himalayas formerly being the ocean just absolutely blows my mind. Makes you wonder what great wonders were lost to time.
The Appalachians are the oldest mountain range in the world. Famously older than trees. Older than the rings of Saturn, too.
Sharks are older than the rings of Saturn
Excuse me whaaaat???
Not like any individual shark, but sharks as a species
Also fun fact, individual sharks can grow pretty old... There are sharks swimming around that were alive when US was still a bunch of colonies.
The rings of saturn are likely only a couple 100 million years old
Ur mom is older than saturn
Ok now I'm getting fucked up
The Scottish highlands are part of the Appalachian range if you didn’t know
Wait, is this true?! Edit: I just looked it up, and it's true. That is an absolutely mind blowing fact! I also learned that the Scandinavian Mountains are also part of that same range!
As well as the Atlas mountains in North Western Africa.
If you want you can hike the Appalachian Trail, continue it though Canada, to then go to Scotland and do the West Highland and Cape Wrath Trails and then switch over to Sweden and hike the Green Band.
Northern Ireland is part of the Appalachian range too
The Appalachians barely make the top 10: https://www.oldest.org/nature/mountain-ranges/
Based on this, they aren't: https://www.oldest.org/nature/mountain-ranges/ Though that list doesn't have for example Karelides, an ancient mountain range in Sweden and Finland, that formed about 2 billion years ago.
They knew… o.O
Apply directly to the forehead.
Funner fact: Chimborazo's summit is the farthest point on the Earth's surface from the Earth's center making it the summit farthest out into space, and 1.5 km closer to the stars than Everest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimborazo
That is a fun fact. Thank you for sharing it. Here's one for you. The mythical Mount Meru was said to be more than a million km high, and according to Hindu cosmology, was the link between the different planes of the universe. Its role is extremely similar to that of Yggdrasil from Norse cosmology, to the point where they may be derived from the same origin myth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Meru
They still call it Sagarmatha. Its the nepali name. Both everest and sagarmatha are used depending on people and context. I don't think it means "ocean's forehead" in any way, because "saagar" means ocean *in Nepali language and in 'sagarmatha' its pronounced as "saw-gar", not "saagar". And apparently, "sagar" means "sky".
You're right about Sagar being the Sanskrit word for ocean. But it was also used to refer to the sky as it can be considered as an ocean of stars. Oceans are extremely prominent in Hindu cosmology, and are considered both a primordial source of life, and the link between different "worlds / dimensions". As for saw-gar, East and North East India tend to convert the "a/aa/ae" sounds to an "au" sound. In effect, they're the same word pronounced in different ways. Ocean's forehead is an accurate term if you consider the beliefs of the time, but a more literal meaning would be "heaven's forehead". Edit: I should say Vedic cosmology, which since has evolved into Hindu cosmology.
Yeah that was my first thought, why would the locals care what british people called it.
To be fair, the name Everest has been in use longer than Sagarmatha. They came up with that name in the 60's. The name Everest came to use 100 years before that. Tibetan people have called the mountain Qomolangma (holy mother) since 1721 or probably even longer than that.
"For the last time, I don't want this mountain named after me." "Shut the hell up, George!"
Finally read Into Thin Air. I recommend.
Incredible book imo. One takeaway I got from that book is that even the people who dream of climbing the mountain and who are obsessed with climbing the mountain understand that it is a ridiculous and stupid thing to want to do, yet they crave it anyway. I like how honest it is about how awful the entire experience climbing the mountain truly is.
I just finished it. What an interesting read that was.
So stressful! Then I watched Meru (it’s on Amazon prime). Way less drama than what happened to those people on Everest. It’s only 3 people trying to get to the summit of another Himalayan peak. But pretty interesting. Mountain climbers have strong willpower and determination!
1996 was an absolute freak of an accident on Everest though. So many mistakes made to make that happen. Rob Hall being one of the most accomplished Everest climbers was so determined to get his client to the summit after previous failures that it cost him his life. Other good climbing documentaries is Dawn Wall which I believe is on Disney+ and look up the Reel Rock series. It’s a bunch of short documentaries packed into one series of pro climbers climbing some crazy crap. It usually tours around the mountain film festivals.
I’m not a specialist on mountain climbing but no list of climbing documentaries is complete without a prominent mention of *Into the Void*, the British film of the true story of two climbers in South America in which one has to cut the rope on the other and let him fall to his death. However, plot twist! (edit: *Touching the Void*, not Into the Void)
Touching the Void. Great movie. There was amazing drama, and then the interviews with the hippie guy waiting back at camp for them were hysterical.
Free Solo is absolutely insane if anyone hasn’t seen it
Alpiniest on Prime too.
If you haven't, almost everyone in that book wrote their own versions and they're all rather interesting perspectives even though Krakauer is the best writer
Probably the only book I've read cover to cover in a day.
Never read 1 fish, 2 fish, red fish, blue fish?
We really lucked out on this dude having a kind of cool name. The darn British could and would have named the world's tallest mountain something like Mount Cockmore.
For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockermouth
And it's in the county of Cumbria?
And when I was about 11/12 the town suffered massive flooding. Leading to an all boys classroom unable to stop laughing while we studied the "Cockermouth floodings in Cumbria".
The m*ass*ive Cockermouth floodings in Cumbria drained into [*Butt*ermere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttermere)
The topographical map on that wiki page resembles a wrinkled butthole, so it all comes together in the end.
Christ, that brings me back. We had a deputy head with a reputation for being the school hard case who taught in cockermouth before they happened. He did an assembly on the flooding. Woe to the lad that started giggling in front of him.
So apparently the Tibetan name for Mt. Everest is Chomolungma (also spelled Qomolangma), which means "Mother Goddess of the World." The Nepali name for Everest is Sagarmatha (or Jhomolongma, also spelled as Jhyamolungma), which most likely means "The Head of the Earth touching the Heaven." As for China, as of 1952, the state officially named it Zhumulangma Feng (珠穆朗玛峰) on Chinese maps and in textbooks and other publications.
Then there's the anecdote about how in 1856 Waugh calculated the height of Mt. Everest to be exactly 29,000ft. However he didn't think anyone would believe such an exact round number, so he decided to add a couple feet to the measurement. Thus he became the first person to put two feet on the top of Mt. Everest.
I found an old article once that listed the six measurements they took. Seems that if you take the median, you'll get 29,000. If you take the mean, you'll get 29,002. So it wasn't quite as underhand as the anecdote suggests.
I would assume that most, if not all, mountains that are named after people would be named after people that have nothing to do with that specific mountain. At least Everest was working with the people involved in mapping that area. Is it just my Australian bias? (Mount Kosciuszko, anyone?)
Ex: McKinley never saw Mt McKinley (Denali)
And Washington never saw Mt Washington.
Are you sure he never visited New Hampshire?
I'm like 98% sure he never visited Vancouver Island.
Rainier is this way. Named for a buddy of the discoverer.
Most of the Cascade Range is named for people who were never even there. John Adams never went to Mount Adams, Peter Rainier never went to Mount Rainier, and John Glacier never even set foot in Washington, let alone visited Glacier Peak.
The native names sound so much cooler for a lot of the Cascades though. Rainier- Tahoma, Adams- Klickitat, St Helens- Loowit, Hood- Wy’east which is probably my favorite, Baker- Koma Kulshan, Mt Jefferson-Seekseekqua, also cool
Washington state should be named Tahoma and I'll die on that hill.
Waterfalls as well. Victoria falls is named after Queen Victoria who has nothing to do with the falls and never even visited it.
Virginia is named after Queen Elizabeth 1st, the Virgin Queen. So... If you think it bad that Victoria never saw those falls... Imagine being a virgin so hard they name a state after your virginity
> Imagine being a virgin so hard they name a state after your virginity Queen Elizabeth I's famous virginity (or rather, her decision not to marry) was extremely voluntary. Her father had six wives and killed two of them, including her own mother, so the concept of marriage wasn't extremely positive for her. And, unlike today, if she had been married her husband would have, in practice, have had all the powers of a king, and she would have been relegated to being his obedient servant. But as a single woman she was able to hold all that power herself. The virgin queen knew exactly what she was doing and didn't make any secret of it.
This is in contrast to Sir Edwin K2, who accepted the honour with pride, before changing his name to George Santos.
He just by chance had the perfect last name for the worlds highest mountain. Though my favourite mountain name of the 8000ers is K2. It just sounds badass.
I remember a news story in the 90s that said K2 was actually higher than Everest, based on new satellite measurements. Always wondered what happened about that. Everest is still reported as higher so obviously this wasn't the case. Either that or there's some massive conspiracy involving Big Mountain.
I believe K2 is steeper and deadlier, but not taller
Out of the 8,000 meter peaks surprisingly Everest is one of the safest ones. Don’t get me wrong you’re very close to death on any 8,000 meter peak, but Everest is so commercialized and largely recognized all the routes are really well mapped and known. K2 for example all the routes are less explored so theirs a lot more random and unknown to them.
That was my understanding too from my last Everest info wormhole lol like Everest is an experience you Pau for, K2 is a challenge for professionals
still, "most safe" still leaves a percentage of deaths that is a lot of deaths for an essentially recreational activity. It's like the most safe gun to shoot yourself in the leg with.
Did you know there's actually three different answers to "What is the tallest mountain on Earth?" It's the Mount Everest if you look at what's higher based on sea level ( 8848 meters high) It's Mauna Kea if you measure a mountain from its base to the peak ( 10210 meters high, The Mauna Kea's base starts under sea level) And it's the Chimborazo in Ecuador if you would measure from the center of the Earth. because the Earth is not a perfect sphere but more an oval shape. That means that you're further from the center when you're on the equator. Chimborazo is very close to the equator and thus has a higher peak measured from the center. (6263 meter from sea level)
Measuring the peak of a mountain from the center of the earth, is like measuring the length of your penis from the center of your anus. "Technically mine is bigger because of my long taint."
Well now let's not be so hasty, it sounds like you might be on to something.
It’s an oblate spheroid. I got that wrong at pub trivia once and now I’ll never forget it
In other news, the Kuiper Belt was not discovered by Gerard Kuiper, he wasn't the first to describe it, and he was adamant that it didn't even exist (Leonard/Edgeworth were first to propose it, and Jewitt and Luu discovered the first object there.) Pythagorus didn't invent the pythagorean theorem. It was well known to the Egyptians centuries before he was born. Ptolemy didn't create the ptolemaic system. It predated him by 1000 years. Things are rarely named for who created or discovered it.
To prevent everything from being named after Euler, discoveries are often named after the first person after Euler to have discovered them.
It was actually common for nobels to pay mathematicians to discover something and *sell* it to them Like l'hopital rule - it was by Johann Bernoulli (teacher of, well, euler) but he was sponsored regularly by l'hopital to solve maths problems. I guess you still needed to eat even if you were in the forefront of maths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_misnamed_theorems
The basic essence of the crypto bubble has always been rich peoples' trendy modern method for sponsoring feral mathematicians (and/or getting scammed)
Feral mathematicians lol
[Relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/2721/)
>pythagorus didn't invent the pythagorean theorem. It was well known to the Egyptians centuries before he was born. untrue. while the babylonians knew about some sets of pythagorean triples, there is little-to-no evidence that they had proof.
Prof. M. Berry once formulated the following two principles: The Arnold Principle. If a notion bears a personal name, then this name is not the name of the discoverer. The Berry Principle. The Arnold Principle is applicable to itself. [src](https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html)
Also despite it not being pronounced that way. Apparently it was Eve-rest. I'm surprised there isn't a bigger campaign to rename it. Sagarmatha is a perfectly good name, which is easily pronounced in English. Or Chomolungma.
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