SPECIAL WORDS FOR SEX AND RELATIONSHIP 229 



, Welsh chwegrwn, Sanskrit qvagura, for father- 

 in-law, while the corresponding words, socrus, etcvpd, 

 qvacriis, for mother-in-law, are used for both husband's 

 and wife's mother. It would be interesting to ascertain 

 whether these words have not in their earliest usage a 

 bias towards either husband's parents or wife's parents 

 exclusively. It is quite clear that in an exogamic matri- 

 archal marriage the wife's parents, and in an exogamic 

 patriarchal marriage the husband's parents, would play 

 the chief part as the parents-in-law. In either case 

 their relations to the young couple would be somewhat 

 different, and we should not unnaturally have expected 

 different names for the husband's and the wife's parents- 

 in-law. 1 The apparently nearly equal weight for both 

 husband's and wife's parents of the svekr terms, as well 

 as their widespread use throughout the Aryan languages, 

 might suggest that they arose in the endogamous group- 

 period, when monogamous unions within the group were 

 becoming the rule, but the parents of both mates were 

 on a nearly equal footing within the group. 2 



It cannot be said that any satisfactory account 

 has been given of these words. Bopp and others 

 have deduced svaqura from sva, own, and quras, the 

 hero, the strong one, as in Greek /cOpo?, authority, 

 /cvpios, master, and Old Irish caur, cur, hero. But, 

 besides the difficulty of tracing the second word in 

 other than the Sanskrit and Greek forms, this origin 



1 It would be of considerable value to ascertain, if possible, whether Greek 

 eKvpos and eitvpd, father- and mother-in-law, and irevdepbs and irevdepd, father- and 

 mother-in-law, were ever specialised in this manner. 



2 Slight evidence that the mother-in-law was originally of the kin may 

 perhaps be found in Lithuanian antfta, mother-in-law, clearly related to and, 

 female ancestress, Greek awls, grandmother. 



