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Lockdowns have caused such a drop in air pollution levels over Nepal that Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) can be seen from Kathmandu for the first time in decades.
The highest mountain on Earth is known as Sagarmatha (सगरमाथा) in Nepali, meaning “goddess of the sky” and Qomolangma (ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ) in Tibetan, meaning “holy mother”. The name “Everest” wasn’t given until 1865. Even the guy it was named after objected, and wanted them to keep a local name for it. Sadly, they did not.
The true names of places in the world always sound much nicer than the colonial names to me.
Heh. Turns out, the name Sagarmatha is even newer than the name Everest! But still, using the Nepalese name makes more sense to me.
Also, that photograph is by Abhushan Gautam (@AbhushanGautam@twitter.com)
@InvaderXan Did you find out how it was named before?
@furkachi Not yet, but I’d be interested to know
@InvaderXan Welp, history digging time xD
@InvaderXan So apparently, according to McGill university it had no Nepalese name but had other ones, including the tibetan one you presented, but also:
" However, the ancient name for the mountain is Devgiri (in Sanskrit, it means "holy mountain") or Devadurga (the English pronounced it as deodungha in the 1800s)"
[source: https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/m/Mount_Everest.htm ]
@furkachi Ok, this is cool, nicely found! Devgiri. I shall have to remember that.
@InvaderXan It is pretty cool :3
@InvaderXan
In Hungary we learned the mountain is called Mount Everest, and its highest peak is “Csomolungma”, which is a rough Hungarian version of the Tibetan name.
@gergely Oh, that’s interesting. So in a way, you learned both names!
@InvaderXan Mt. McKinley in Alaska is actually called Denali in the indigenous language. Such a better name!
@ross Yeah, that's way better! And probably more meaningful too. I wonder if there's a story behind the name.
@ross @InvaderXan yeah, I think Denali and Uluru (in Australia) are now better known than the colonial names. But apparently part of why Everest ended up called that was that it's so honkin huge that four or five different local groups had names for it and the colonial administrators didn't want to piss some of them off by making their rivals' name the official one
@ross @InvaderXan also part of the reason that McKinley was such a bad choice for a name is that he had literally nothing to do with Alaska, didn't oversee its purchase or transition to statehood or anything, didn't even visit as far as I know. It only happened because a dipshit senator from Ohio wanted to honor a fellow Ohioan. The same process that names branch post offices in small cities was used for the tallest mountain in North America.
@robotcarsley @ross From the account I read, pissing some of wasn’t a consideration. The argument was basically “we don’t know which name is most used, and Nepal and Tibet don’t like us anyway, so we’re going to just call it something totally different, k?” IDK, it came off more ad laziness than respect.
Glad people returned to the name Uluru though.
@ross @InvaderXan I think the name "Mount McKinley" has been dropped now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denali%E2%80%93Mount_McKinley_naming_dispute
