Here are some facts which should be brought into this conversation and some musings. Please correct me where I go astray.
(1) The dative case is absent in modern Greek, though it is omnipresent in Koine, we may expect to see some changes in frequency from the classical usages and frequencies.
(2) A search of TLG-e for the following phrases returns the following:
ὅνομά μοι 29x (many rehashes of Mark 5.9)
ὄνομά μου 566x
ὄνομά σοι 99x (many lxx, nt, church fathers, and magical papyri)
ὄνομά σου 878x
ὄνομα αὐτῷ 410x
ὄνομα αὐτοῦ 1441x (a lot of church fathers, lxx, ecclesiastical writers, Cassius Dio, but very few occurrences in the traditional classical authors)
While one cannot take these statistics as definitive or prescriptive, it can be seen that the genitive construction (which perhaps has more of an adjectival sense) is more prevalent than the dative across the broad spectrum of authors. But more passages talk about a name rather than ascribe a name to someone, and that is one reason the genitive is more prevalent. Perhaps a better search would be ἦν + ὄνομα + αὐτῷ / αὐτοῦ. There are some classical usages of ὄνομα αὐτῷ, though not a lot:
Plato Phil., Protagoras
Stephanus page 315, section e, line 2
ἔδοξα ἀκοῦσαι ὄνομα αὐτῷ εἶναι Ἀγάθωνα, καὶ οὐκ ἂν θαυμάζοιμι
εἰ παιδικὰ Παυσανίου τυγχάνει ὤν.
Dionysius Halicarnassensis Hist., Rhet., Antiquitates Romanae
Book 10, chapter 49, section 2, line 1
Σπόριος Οὐεργίνιος ἦν ὄνομα αὐτῷ.
Athenaeus Soph., Deipnosophistae
Book 8, Kaibel paragraph 61, line 16
ὁ δ' Ἴφικλος
πυθόμενος παρά τινος τὰ τῶν Φοινίκων λόγια καὶ
ἐνεδρεύσας τοῦ Φαλάνθου πιστόν τινα πορευόμενον
ἐφ' ὕδωρ, ᾧ ὄνομα ἦν Λάρκας,
(3) Could Hebrew 'my name,' 'I am called..." שְׁמִי ending in 'i' match up cross-linguistically with Greek μοι because it sounds alike and therefore be used more by Semitic writers of Greek? I doubt it. The genitive is used more by far than the dative in the LXX (e.g. 5x ὄνομά σοι; 97x ὄνομά σου). Even the combination of ὄνομα with the dative or the genitive, is kind of parallel to the Hebrew. 1 Samuel 1.1 is a good example.
1 Sam 1.1:
וַיְהִי֩ אִ֨ישׁ אֶחָ֜ד מִן־הָרָמָתַ֛יִם צוֹפִ֖ים מֵהַ֣ר אֶפְרָ֑יִם וּשְׁמ֡וֹ אֶ֠לְקָנָה
and there was a certain man from ....and his name was Elkanah.
Ἄνθρωπος ἦν ἐξ Αρμαθαιμ Σιφα ἐξ ὄρους Εφραιμ, καὶ ὄνομα αὐτῷ Ελκανα
(My Hebrew is very rusty. Is Hebrew שְׁמ֡וֹ equivalent for the name to him "ha-shem lo" "the-name to-him" הָשֵׁם לוֹ? What is the way Hebrew/Aramaic talk about their name most frequently? Note: Hebrew has personal pronoun suffixes on nouns, which Greek does not have, and also adds them to prepositions such as לְ.)
(4) My experience with reading secular non-biblical Greek is that name ownership is expressed differently than we see in the NT examples listed in this thread. Though while the structure as in LXX 1 Sam 1.1 is clear and good Greek, it may also be idiomatic Semitic influenced Greek (i.e. the ὅνομα μοι / ὄνομα μου phrases was the way Semites speaking Greek as a second language most often chose to use when expressing their name in Greek). But it was not the way Greeks talked among themselves. Later in the early 100 and 200's A.D., this phraseology became more frequent in ecclesiastical literature and most probably in spoken language also.
Stephen Hughes wrote:
David Lim wrote:This is literally something like "What is the name for (given to) you?" and "Legion is the name for (given to) me".
Is the verb "to give" used with ὄνομα? The usual verb seems to be καλεῖν as in
Matthew 1:21 wrote:καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν·
The construction is Verb + 2 accusatives.
Do you have any example where an ὄνομα has been given (διδόναι)?
Here is another example:
Zosimus Alchem., Ζωσίμου πρᾶξις βʹ
(e codd. Paris. B.N. gr. 2327, fol. 87v + Laur. gr. 86.16, fol. 93v) Line 31
Τὸ δὲ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ ἐκαλεῖτο Ἀγαθοδαίμων.
Cassius Dio Hist., Historiae Romanae
Book 42, chapter 48, section 4, line 3
τούς τε Ἀμισηνοὺς ἐλευ-
θερίᾳ ἠμείψατο, καὶ τῷ Μιθριδάτῃ τῷ Περγαμηνῷ τετραρχίαν τε
ἐν Γαλατίᾳ καὶ βασιλείας ὄνομα ἔδωκε, πρός τε τὸν Ἄσανδρον
πολεμῆσαι ἐπέτρεψεν, ὅπως καὶ τὸν Βόσπορον κρατήσας αὐτοῦ
λάβῃ, ὅτι πονηρὸς ἐς τὸν φίλον ἐγένετο.
Cassius Dio Hist., Historiae Romanae
Book 53, chapter 26, section 4, line 4
ὑπὸ δὲ τὸν αὐτὸν τοῦτον χρόνον Μᾶρκος
Οὐινίκιος Κελτῶν τινας μετελθών, ὅτι Ῥωμαίους ἄνδρας ἐς τὴν χώ-
ραν σφῶν κατὰ τὴν ἐπιμιξίαν ἐσελθόντας συλλαβόντες ἔφθειραν,
τὸ ὄνομα καὶ αὐτὸς τὸ τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος τῷ Αὐγούστῳ ἔδωκε.
Cassius Dio Hist., Historiae Romanae
Book 55, chapter 10, section 8, line 4
οὐ μέντοι καὶ διὰ πασῶν τῶν ἡμερῶν τούτων ὁ Αὔγου-
στος ὑπάτευσεν, ἀλλ' ἐπ' ὀλίγον ἄρξας ἄλλῳ τὸ ὄνομα τῆς ὑπα-
τείας ἔδωκε.