Get the name of the currently executing method

Even better than my first answer you can use __method__:

class Foo
  def test_method
    __method__
  end
end

This returns a symbol – for example, :test_method. To return the method name as a string, call __method__.to_s instead.

Note: This requires Ruby 1.8.7.

From http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/2785:

module Kernel
private
    def this_method_name
      caller[0] =~ /`([^']*)'/ and $1
    end
end

class Foo
  def test_method
    this_method_name
  end
end

puts Foo.new.test_method    # => test_method

For Ruby 1.9+ I'd recommend using __callee__