> instead that they include the name of a person they just met in every sentence because it made that person like them more.

I've never read this book but have learned through cultural osmosis that this practice largely originated from it. I always found it rather stilted and ever since discovering where it came from I view it with a degree of suspicion. A contrasting, more generous reading is that the people who read the book and do this are trying to do more of the "win friends" part than "influence people." I'm also notoriously bad with names so I can't really blame somebody for perhaps trying to use mine verbally to commit it to memory :-).