I am now curious of the origins of the word goby, and I haven’t been able to find much online. Obviously there is the Gobi desert and there is a goby fish. A friend who speaks Urdu and Hindi informed me that ghobi means cauliflower or a type of pancake. Jim's supertopo post above has a couple potential explanations, first one being “Definition for goby: Reverse salutations, goodbye, see you later. To be used when departing from presence. Kinda fits.... as when you get one (a gobie) you are usually leaving, be it skin, or the crack, and need to say bye-bye.”
Another person says, “actually you may be surprised but the actual origin of the word is from the Persian/Urdu/Hindi word 'Gobi' which literally means Cauliflower. The scabs resemble cauliflowers and even today any manual work that causes scabs is referred to as growing 'gobis' by the natives."
Pancake could also make sense due to the pancake like piece of skin left from the gobi.
Any linguists here (that specialize in climbing lingo)?