I have heard that after the Spanish influenza pandemic that killed 50-some million people in 1918ish, the Ladies Home Journal, in 1919, decreed that the "parlor," the room that ended up having the dead laid out during the pandemic, should be now called the "living room" because it was now a room for the living, and it would honor the living.

So, in my mind, a parlor and a living room are the same thing, it's just a name change.