homeless people

Hey all,

I have a question about the word for a homeless person in Russian. I heard a few days ago that the russian word for homeless person "бомж" is an acronym for "без о... место жить" (without ... place to live). Can someone tell me the word for the letter "o" and tell me if this is true, or if the acronym established itself after the word had been in use for a while. Also curious to me is the similarity between the word "бомж" and the english word "bum", or is this just coincidence?

Thanks for the input.