The guy that came up with the concept was named bullpup

I'd al ways been told that it derived from an English dog breed, the bullpup. Originally bred for rat-catching, they had short legs, were rather small overall, but were quite strong, roughly equal to some bigger dogs like the (Welsh) border collie. Bullpup rifles also originatyed in England, originally intended for use by physically-challenged sport shooters, such as those confined to wheelchairs or lacking one hand or arm. The shorter overal length of a rifle with the (at that time) bolt or falling-block action set back into the stock comb made them more easily used by people who for whatever reason had difficulty handling a full-length rifle. As they were shorter than a conventional rifle, but stil retained nearly-full power due to having a longer barrel than a carbine, someone took to calling them "bullpups"- and the name stuck..

The term comes from "Project Bulpup", a randomly assigned codename. That was a British project looking at ideal rifle-cartridge combinations, which ultimately resulted in the EM-2 rifle in 7mm British. This rifle had what we call a bulpup arrangement, and subsequent weapons with this arrangement were referred to as 'Bulpup style', later simply 'Bulpup'. The term has nothing to do with description of physical characteristics, similarities to canines, or anybody's name. Similar confusion exists over the first American proximity antiaircraft fuse VT, which people claim stood for 'variable time' as a deceptive measure. VT was simply the next letter that the Navy assigned to a radar related device.

The first bullpup that I know of was an experimental cavalry weapon made to fight the Boers in 1901. You can find a picture and full description of it in "Military Rifles and Pistols" from the Sunburst Military Series. I forget the name of the inventor, but it wasn't bullpup.

I never heard those dogs called 'bullpups'. They were always called rat terriers.

Perhaps "bullpup" was a turn-of-the-century English nickname for them, or the name simply grew out of their spirit; the power of a bull, the size of a pup.

These fighting little dogs were also called, appropriately, 'feists'. President Theodore Roosevelt favored feists because of their spirit.