Set site name in installation profile
The work-around that I'm currently using (because I really need to move on and accomplish other things) is to add a 

drush -y vset site_name "My Site"


call to the bash script that I'm using to create the mysql database and run the installation. Not an elegant solution, (and it bypasses localization, but that's not an issue yet, since the site is currently in only one language), but it gets the job done for now so that I can get other things working.

Leaving this here in case it helps someone, but not "accepting" it, since it's a work-around, not an answer.