This is, I think, a quirk of the Japanese language. It famously has many of what we would consider first person pronouns, which have a feeling to me of kinda being third person themselves. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say they don't have such a strict delineation. Occasionally one can even hear someone use, for example, 'boku' as a second person pronoun. It's maybe kinda like in a casino a dealer might say that "the house" wins, or a judge might say "this court" regarding a decision. Only many such 'role' pronouns exist in Japanese.
One can imagine growing up as a child and hearing Japanese with its variety of first-person pronouns, which also are not used as much as we use them in English, and choosing to use your name as it is consistently associated with you.
That said, I've had only a smattering of Japanese study, so definitely take all of that with a grain of salt.
My Japanese knowledge is even more limited, but Japanese seems to use a persons name in conversation far more often than English. Like in English we would say "it's nice to see you" but Japanese seems to say "it's nice to see Anidiot."
When you're regularly calling everybody else by their name, calling yourself by your name makes sense.
Ah! Thanks for this comment. It reminded me of another case where someone speaks in third person: in business settings. For example, I have seen this in code reviews when someone is disagreeing with a change in a pull request in a company: " Since <<reason>>, ABC thinks this change is unnecessary."
However, do keep in mind this is anecdotal so I don't know how much it applies to more broad settings.
> seems to use a persons name in conversation far more often than English
Actually, calling the other one by their name + san/chan/kun is the most common way. Using "anata" (= you) can even be considered rude under certain circumstances. My wife never calls me "anata". Also, pronouns are often omitted if it is clear who is being meant (a bit like in Italian).
I'm currently formally learning Mexican Spanish in Mexico. In day to day life here it's very uncommon to hear the pronoun. The only exceptions I can think of are 'Usted/Ustedes' or 'Nos'.
Using or not using the pronoun has the same emphasis as saying to someone:
'You're drunk.' versus pointedly saying 'You, are drunk'.
----
Soy Latte, por favor! (In Spanish this translates literally as 'I'm a latte. please.')
Whoa, how on earth could boku be a _second person_ pronoun? Admittedly I don’t speak any Japanese, but referring to myself, when I actually say “you” sounds confusing.
I usually use boku and my girlfriend sometimes calls me boku, whether she's talking to me or about me to someone else. There's no confusion because she couldn't be using boku to mean herself.
I'm not a linguist, but it seems like there's no grammatical difference between first/second/third person in Japanese - you can consider all the sentences to be in third person.
Thinking of it as 'I' or 'you' is misleading. That's kinda what I'm trying to say in my post: it's more like these are all third-person roles. If you think of 'boku' as more like 'this boy' than 'I' or 'me' it becomes easier to understand I think.
One can imagine growing up as a child and hearing Japanese with its variety of first-person pronouns, which also are not used as much as we use them in English, and choosing to use your name as it is consistently associated with you.
That said, I've had only a smattering of Japanese study, so definitely take all of that with a grain of salt.