Guilin (China): Chinese and Tibetan scholars have launched a fresh bid to restore the original Tibetan name to the world's highest peak, Mount Everest.

"It is time, for the world to rectify the error made by British colonialists over a century ago," top Chinese and Tibetan experts were quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency on November 19.

Though the Chinese marked the location of Mount Qomolangma on their map more than 280 years ago, Westerners today continue to refer to the peak as Mount Everest, rather than Tibetans' Goddess Qomolangma, the peak's original name, the report said.

In the Tibetan language, Qomolangma represents the mother goddess of the earth.

"In an era when colonialism has long been past, it is high time for the Western world to respect us Tibetans by recognising the highest peak on earth in its Tibetan name, Qomolangma," Gelek, a Tibetan scholar with China's Tibetology Centre, said.

"Blindly believing themselves the first to discover the tallest mountain straddling the border of Tibet and Nepal, the British named the peak in honour of George Everest, a British surveyor general of India who led a team in surveying the Himalayan ranges in the early 1840s," the report said.

In a paper published in 1958, Lin Chao, a late prestigious expert on geographic history and topography with Beijing University, noted that George Everest did not deserve the honour, as it was Tibetans themselves who first discovered the peak.

PTI