Since almost all the references to parīsu come from Western areas (Mari, Alalakh, Carchemish, Emar, Boghazköy), it is reasonable to surmise that we are dealing with a “Western” lexical feature (Westenholz 2000:xiv, with additional references). Derivation from
*prs ‘to cut, to divide’ in West Semitic is feasible both semantically and morphologically.