Word needed

[Hutch]

Quoting Jean-Joseph Cote <jjcote at juno.com>:
> Hutch writes:
> > I did not inherit anything when any of them
> > (currently deceased) died and will not inherit
> > anything when my father dies. ('Cause he doesn't
> > have anything to leave me :)
> 
> Au contraire. I bet you will inherit the white stripe
> in the middle of your beard. Which is probably why
> you finally shaved it a few years ago. And that's
> interesting, because it means you can inherit it
> while he's still alive. You can inherit
> characteristics from someone who isn't dead. Are you
> still considered an "heir" with respect to those
> characteristics?
> 
> (And you can always inherit debts ... that makes
> "benefactor" a particularly bad choice of words ...)
> 
> Jean-Joseph

Haven't gotten that white stripe yet ... and yes, I've 
grown the beard back :)

This use of the word "inherit" is, after all, extremely 
new: Gregor Mendel in 1856 was the beginning of genetics. 
I've never heard "heir" used in this sense (anybody else?).

Thing is, a 'partner' for "heir", if one exists at all, 
would have likely been coined about the same time as "heir" 
was. So, we want to look at words extant in pre- and early 
Norman times in England: 5th to 10th Century? (It seems to 
have come to English via French.) And it would come from 
the same source: Norman common law.

Does this sound reasonable?

Can we look to French and Latin for the 'partner' to "heir" 
in those languages, then find the equivalent word in 
English?

I don't know enough French or Latin to find such a word. 
Anyone else?

BB,
Hutch