h₃erp-
“to turn, change sides”Source of Greek orphanos, Latin orbus, English orphan
Root meaning to turn or change allegiance, yielding Greek orphanos and English orphan.
Discussion
The Proto-Indo-European root *h₃erp- meant "to turn, to change sides, to switch allegiance" and produced a small but culturally significant family of descendants. The initial laryngeal *h₃ rounded the adjacent vowel and was subsequently lost in most daughter languages. The root carried strong social connotations — turning away from one's group, being bereft of protection, changing one's position in the community.
The most important English descendant is orphan, which reached English through Latin orphanus and Greek orphanos "bereaved, fatherless". The Greek form directly reflects the Proto-Indo-European root with the sense of someone who has been "turned away" from parental protection — one whose social position has been reversed by the death of a parent. The word entered English in the late medieval period and has maintained its meaning without significant drift.
In Germanic, the root may appear in Old English earfoþe "hardship, difficulty" (literally "a turning, a reversal"), though this connection is not universally accepted. The semantic link would be that hardship is a reversal of fortune, a "turning" of one's circumstances.
Latin orbus "bereaved, deprived" (especially of parents or children) is a key cognate, used by Roman writers to describe the condition of being bereft. The related root *h₃erbʰ-es- "orphan, bereft" (which produced Greek orphanos more directly) is closely connected and may represent an extended form of *h₃erp-.
The root *h₃erp- offers a window into Proto-Indo-European social thought. The orphan was not merely a child without parents but someone whose fundamental social orientation had been disrupted — a person "turned" from the normal course of life. This conceptualisation of bereavement as a spatial or directional change, a turning away from security, reveals a deeply physical metaphor underlying what we now regard as an emotional and social category.