Names are stories

You probably recognise this #mountain? It's the highest above sea level on #Earth.

In 1865 it was named Mount #Everest by Andrew Waugh, after George Everest who led the Great Trigonometric Survey to map #India from 1830-1843.

Everest did not welcome the honour. He had never seen the peak, nor was he involved in its measurement. Credit for calculating the height of the world's highest #mountain belongs to Bengali mathematician Radhanath Sikdar whom Everest recognised as a “rare genius”.

It was a Survey directive - one Everest meticulously observed - to always use local names wherever possible. He pointed out his name was hard to say in Hindi, as he did, EVE-REST.

Yet Waugh argued "here is a mountain, probably the highest in the world, without any local name we can discover...”

With Nepal and Tibet closed to foreign travel, it was indeed difficult to establish a definitive local name although a variant of its ancient Tibetan name #Chomolungma appears on a 1733 map. In Darjeeling it was called Devgiri. But ethnic Nepalese rarely named single peaks - although small groups were called a "Himal". It's only since 1960s the Nepalese name has been Sagarmatha.

Names are always #stories. We should question them.