Mount Everest

Mount Everest was known as Peak XV until 1856, when it was named for Sir George Everest, the surveyor general of India from 1830 to 1843. The naming coincided with an official announcement of the mountain's height, taken as the average of six separate measurements made by the Great Trigonometrical Survey in 1850. Most Nepali people refer to the mountain as Sagarmatha, meaning “Forehead in the Sky.” Speakers of Tibetan languages, including the Sherpa people of northern Nepal, refer to the mountain as Chomolungma, Tibetan for “Goddess Mother of the World.”

The height of Mount Everest has been determined to be 8,850 m (29,035 ft). The mountain’s actual height, and the claim that Everest is the highest mountain in the world, have long been disputed. But scientific surveys completed in the early 1990s continued to support evidence that Everest is the highest mountain in the world. In fact, the mountain is rising a few millimeters each year due to geological forces. Global Positioning System (GPS) has been installed on Mount Everest for the purpose of detecting slight rates of geological uplift.