How impressed would you be if somebody told you they'd climbed Mount Qomo- langma?It might not sounds familiar to the Western ear, but Qomolangma is, in fact, the world's highest mountain.
Qomolangma is Mount Everest.
Perhaps you are wiser than I and would not have been perplexed by today's headlines proclaiming the Olympic torch is bound for Mt Qomolangma. But to me, it was all a bit confusing. It didn't get all that much clearer after I looked into it a bit more deeply.
The Tibetan name for Mount Everest is Chomolungma or Qomolangma which means 'Saint Mother'.
English explorers in the 1800s recorded the local name of the massive mountain (which spans the Nepal/Tibet border) as Deodungha, or 'Holy Mountain'. It was in 1865 that the Royal Geographical Society gave it the name Mount Everest.
Then, in the 1960s, the Government of Nepal gave the mountain a brand new official Nepali name: Sagarmatha which means 'Goddess of the Sky'. (Thank you Wikipedia)
The continued name changes are rooted in all sorts of complicated stuff like China's claim over Tibet, Nepal's desire for reunification, Britain's colonial exploits in India, and the variety of local dialects spoken by people in the villages near the foot of the big hill.
The latest twist came in 2002 that the Chinese People's Daily newspaper published an article making a case against the continued use of the English name for the mountain in the Western world, insisting that it should be referred to by its Tibetan name: Qomolangma.
This name, they said, preceded the English name and was marked on a Chinese map more than 280 years ago.
And there was I thinking it had always been called Everest.
So, that's it. We're going back to the oldest recorded names we can think of.
That's why I'm changing the name of my book to: Peking for Beginners: a Hibernian in the Middle Kingdom.
2 comments:
This is great info to know.
Actually, there is a movement afoot to revert (not "change") the name to its historical and correct name, "Mt. Qomolangma." Qomolangma is actually the name of the entire region that includes the currently-named Mt. Everest.
What is tragic is that the name "Everest" was named after a man surveyed India for atlas creation purposes, Sir George Everest (pronounced "EAVE-rest", not "EV-er-rest" as most people pronounce the mountain's name, in another historical blunder). In fact, Everest himself as a stickler for ensuring that every local geographical name stick to its local preference.
The problem was that when the tallest mountain was ascertained through trigometric readings, the Qomolangma region was closed to outsiders, so nobody could traverse to the area and get the correct, local name. So the English Scientific Society proclaimed the name Mt. Everest, after the surveyor general. It is also noted that Everest himself was originally not happy with this designation.
In any case, as many localities around the world are being named in the world atlases by their local preferences, Mt. Qomolagnma should be rightly stored to its former and righteous name. You can edcuate your viewers at the site, www.mountq.org, for more information.
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