Inheritance

Many a posting ago, we discussed the names of the Scythian
ancsetors, the brothers Leipoxais, Arpoxais, and Kolaxais
(Herodotus), and someone (he said modestly) suggested that the names
of the two former had to do with an old distinction between
inheritance of immobile and mobile property, respectively (*l-yp-, *l-
ykW-o- vs. *orbh-o-.

Koivolehto (Uralische Evidenz für die Laryngealtheorie) connects
the latter with o-grade of PIE *er- "trennen" (Benveniste connects it
with Hitt. h^arp- "séparer, retrancher"): "also
eigentlich 'getrennter Anteil'. Cf. the concept in Danish law (I
don't know what the Common Law equvalent is): 'skifte bo', to
separate from the inheritance those components which won't be part of
the property that passes to the one who gets the immobile property.
The *orbh-o- (Fi. 'orpo') is therefore the one who has to leave the
community with his property to fend for himself (therefore
Latin 'arma' "weapons"?).

So it would seem the original analysis is corroborated.

Torsten