EDIT: All these things can be summed up in one word: personalization.
(You want the user to feel like they own this, when a user feels like that, there's a emotional connection. That emotional connection will lead to a user having a harder time leaving your software. But yes, the "principle name" is "Personalization")
EDIT: Sorry for the large amount of text. It just keeps on connecting to other topics, and I can't control it. Just read paragraph one and you'll be good.
I think it definitely is true, other examples of this would be in some first person shooter games, where to immerse you in the game, not much is said about the character you control. The character usually doesn't even speak much. It's meant to make the experience personal, and yes, I know, they probably didn't do that because we secretly hate to about others, but I'm certain you get the connection. Windows also never actually tells you that it's Windows (Windows 10 at least doesn't tell you it's Windows 10, you only see it's light blue logo of four squares).
A more common occurrence of what you mentioned (the hating of seeing other people's names mentioned), is when usually seen between women. Ever notice how pissed a woman can get when another woman does something better than her, whether it's dressing better, getting more attention, even dating a guy the former has interest in (You so much as mention the latter woman's name and you've pretty much signed your death sentence). Your finding, for me at least, sounds a lot like it's connected to this occurrence. And I think some designers have caught onto this and tried to make it more personal. Maybe it's because of fear that even if the user might not be female they might still "secretly" have these types of emotions.
Human beings have always been bent on finding things that match up with what they like, or at least that something is similar to you. And whether you are a guy named "joy" you will still enjoy meeting someone (male/female) who has the same name. There's also group think, how we like to go after things that match up with what we think things should be like (our perception of things). This could be going to websites that have the same political views as we do, having friends who have the same beliefs or value the same things as we do, etc. This image best describes this:
What i'm trying to say is that, trying to connect with someone on a personal level usually means you have to make things about them rather than you. Even using the word "you" (or was it "my") in a signup form could lead to more signups. When it comes to UX it's all about the user and putting them center stage. If you fail to do this, or refuse to acknowledge this, your users will definitely ignore your tool/software and find an alternative that succeeds in putting them center stage.
References:
The Complete Guide to Understanding Consumer Psychology(Please read this, even though it's aimed more at marketers than at UX devs):
- If you read Chapter One, you'll get to a section whose title is ""You"":
- In chapter five you are reminded to use "You" and shown how to do this more effectively (I think it does. I just schemed over it):
Silent Protagonist can lead to immersion
Personalization (a.k.a. customization):