Anthropomorphism
Personification
The tendency to characterize animals, objects, and abstract concepts as possessing human-like traits, emotions, and intentions.
Origin
From the Greek ánthrōpos ("human") and morphē ("form"), the word entered English around 1753, originally describing the heresy of giving God a human shape. But the concept is ancient: Xenophanes challenged it as early as the 6th century BCE, arguing that if horses and oxen could paint, they would depict gods in their own image. The practice pervades ancient mythology — Greek, Egyptian, and Hindu traditions all gave deities human form — and the term has since broadened to cover any attribution of human traits to animals, objects, or abstract forces.
Everyday Use
You talk to your car when it won't start, scold your laptop for being slow, or describe your dog as "guilty" when it chews your shoe. We instinctively project human feelings onto things that don't have them — it's how we make the non-human world feel more familiar and manageable.