Mount Everest Discovery: Who Was the First to See It?

The first European to see Mount Everest was the British surveyor George Everest in 1841, and the mountain was named after him. However, the mountain was known to the indigenous peoples of the region for centuries before this, and they had their own names for it. The Tibetan name for Everest is Chomolungma, which means "Goddess Mother of the World", while the Nepali name is Sagarmatha, which means "Peak of the Sky".