In 1856, Thomas George Montgomerie, a member of the British Royal Engineers and part of the Great Trigonometric Survey, sighted the mountain and named it "K4", meaning the fourth mountain of Karakoram.[11] The name "Gasherbrum" comes from the Balti words rgasha ("beautiful") and brum ("mountain"); it does not, contrary to popular belief, mean "shining wall", how Sir William Martin Conway described nearby Gasherbrum IV on an 1892 exploration.[11][12][13][14]