Is there any way to get the name of an Knockout observable object?

One way would be to give the extended observable the refence to this like

Pseudo code (I would use .extend() on observable instead)

ViewModel = function() {    
    this.newObservable = ko.perstableObservable(this);
}

ko.perstableObservable = function(owner) {
   this.owner = owner;
   ...
};

Then you can itterate over this and find the observable reference

persistValue = function(value) {
   var name = null;
   for(var index in this.owner) {
      if(this.owner[index] === this) {
         name = index;
         break;
      }
   }
   ...
}