Linguistic's lover

So I've decided for my own pleasure I will be posting here and there some of what-I-find-to-be-interesting factoids of the English Language. I love studying the history of language and the evolution of it. And, although I have caught a few of my own grammatical errors and know I'm not perfect, I love to "find" errors in writing. This fall I found a book at Costco (Jackie, I should find you a copy too) Called "Common Errors in the English Language". Or something like that. It's like it was written FOR me. So here are two tidbits that I found while reading "Eat, Pray, Love":

GURU: GU means dark and RU means light, so they intend the word to mean "Out of the darkness and into the light". Since a guru is supposed to bring you enlightenment or help you move to another place in life, to me it makes sense, poetically.

HOBO: HO stands for Homeward, and BO stands for Bound. So a Hobo is a travelling person who is "Homeward Bound". Kind of cute until the world became littered with "Hobo's". I guess there is a difference between Hobo, Wine-O, and Bum. I grew up with my dad calling everybody in Seattle "Wine-O's".

Oh, and I also would like to know if you have any "family" words that are either geographical in nature or that don't make any sense to anybody but your family. We had "Nernees". I'll put it in a sentence. "I've got to wash the windshield and get all the bug nernees off it." We used it for guts, germs, anything unsanitary.