<P> Waugh argued that because there were many local names, it would be difficult to favour one name over all others, so he decided that Peak XV should be named after Welsh surveyor Sir George Everest, his predecessor as Surveyor General of India . Everest himself opposed the name suggested by Waugh and told the Royal Geographical Society in 1857 that "Everest" could not be written in Hindi nor pronounced by "the native of India". Waugh's proposed name prevailed despite the objections, and in 1865, the Royal Geographical Society officially adopted Mount Everest as the name for the highest mountain in the world . The modern pronunciation of Everest (/ ˈɛvərɪst /) is different from Sir George's pronunciation of his surname (/ ˈiːvrɪst / EEV - rist). </P> <P> The Tibetan name for Mount Everest is ཇོ ་ མོ ་ གླང ་ མ (IPA: (t͡ɕhòmòlɑ́ŋmɑ̀), lit . "Holy Mother"), whose official Tibetan pinyin form is Qomolangma . It is also popularly romanised as Chomolungma and (in Wylie) as Jo - mo - glang - ma or Jomo Langma . The official Chinese transcription is 珠穆朗玛 峰 (t 珠穆朗瑪 峰), whose pinyin form is Zhūmùlǎngmǎ Fēng . It is also infrequently simply translated into Chinese as Shèngmǔ Fēng (t 聖母 峰, s 圣母 峰, lit . "Holy Mother Peak"). In 2002, the Chinese People's Daily newspaper published an article making a case against the use of "Mount Everest" in English, insisting that the mountain should be referred to as Mount "Qomolangma", based on the official form of the local Tibetan name . The article argued that British colonialists did not "first discover" the mountain, as it had been known to the Tibetans and mapped by the Chinese as "Qomolangma" since at least 1719 . </P> <P> In the early 1960s, the Nepalese government coined a Nepali name for Mount Everest, Sagarmāthā or Sagar - Matha (सागर - मथ्था). </P> <P> The 8,848 m (29,029 ft) height given is officially recognised by Nepal and China, although Nepal plans a new survey . </P>

Who gave the name sagarmatha to mt. everest