In the early 1960s, the Nepalese government realized that Mount Everest had no Nepalese name. This was because the mountain was not known and named in ethnic Nepal (that is, the Kathmandu valley and surrounding areas). The government set out to find a name for the mountain (the Sherpa/Tibetan name Chomolangma was not acceptable, as it would have been against the idea of unification (Nepalization) of the country. The name Sagarmatha (सगरमाथा, Sanskrit for “Head of the Sky”) was thus invented by Baburam Acharya.

In 2002, 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. The newspaper argued that the Chinese name preceded the English one, as Mount Qomolangma was marked on a Chinese map more than 280 years ago.