Talk:सगरमाथा

Spelling & Etymology

The most common spelling appears to be सगरमाथा “Sagarmāthā” but there is a minority that insists that the name is actually सागरमाथा “Sāgarmāthā”.

I couldn’t find a authoritative citation for the etymology. The translations vary: Forehead of the Ocean, Forehead of the Sky, Ocean Mother, Goddess of the Sky, Peak of Heaven, and many more increasingly dubious versions.

There are at least two options for the first part of the compound.
सगर (“sagara”, sky) but सगर doesn’t seem to mean sky in Sanskrit, Nepali or Hindi.
सागर (“sāgara”, ocean) but it doesn’t make sense to me that the first ा would be removed from the resulting compound.

Same for the second part of the compound.
माथा (“māthā”, forehead) seems fine to me.
माता (“mātā”, mother) but it doesn’t make sense to me that the त would be changed to a थ in the resulting compound.

My best guess is that the initial (1956) coining itself was mistaken. It is apparently based on a “very dubious etymological interpretation” as per at least one scholar. Maybe the coiner just picked something that seemed plausible and sounded good.

Since सगर doesn’t seem to mean anything (apart from the name of one Hindu mythical character and even that character is connected to the ocean, not the sky), it seems more likely to me that सागर is the first part of the compound.

I consider it reasonable that it was intended as a complementary name to ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ “Chomolangma” (approximate pronunciation in Lhasa Tibetan). I’m confident that in this compound, “cho mo” (ཇོ་མོ) is used with the meaning “goddess”, which is not far from “holy mother”. If it’s true that it was picked as a complementary name, I would expect the Nepali name to end with माता (“mātā”, mother). Combining that with सागर, we get सागरमाता ([sagʌrmata] “Sāgarmātā”, ocean mother), though the implausibility of त changing to थ is a big problem.

It seems to me that the confusion in spelling and etymology of this name has been inherent since the very beginning.

So, if I had to choose, I’d ditch the newly-invented Nepali name and stick to the old Tibetan pronunciation of ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ, i.e., [*d͡ʑo.mo.glaŋ.ma] approx. “Jomoglangma”. If that wasn’t an option, I’d pick सागरमाथा meaning Forehead of the Ocean because the rock at the top of the mountain was at the bottom of the ocean millions of years ago.

— Fractaloid (talk) 20:50, 20 July 2023 (UTC)