What is a word for giving of human characteristics to non living things?
Personification is the process of giving human nature or motives
(anger, revenge, love etc.) in literature or similar activities to
non-human things. This includes animals, mountains, buildings,
nations etc.
When you give animals, specifically.a wide range of human
attributes (speech, wear clothes, live in little cottages in the
woods, etc.) you anthropomorphize them. The process is
anthropomorphism.