In Mark 5:9, Jesus asked the demon his name, and the demon answered, "Legion." However, there could be another meaning to this story, in which case we can not say that the demon was really called Legion.
Dennis R MacDonald (The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark) argues that the Gospel of Mark contains material moDELLed on the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, using a technique known as mimesis, common at the time among Greek students to demonstrate mastery of the Greek language. He notes that when Jesus and his crew disembarked they met a wild, demon-possessed man of incredible strength and violent, terrifying habits, who lived among caves. In The Odyssey, Odysseus and his crew disembarked and met Polyphemus, a savage, lawless, cave-dwelling giant of incredible strength and violent, terrifying habits. When Polyphemus asked Odysseus for his name, he replied, 'Nobody'. When Jesus asked the demon his name, the demon replied, 'Legion' - the request was reversed and the answer was an absolute reverse of that by Odysseus. There are so many other parallels in this short passage that the demon's reply to Jesus was undoubtedly a transvaluation of the reply in the Odyssey, not really the demon's name.
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