Hushing the Hush Puppy lore...

The Legend of the Hush Puppy

I never liked eating hush puppies. However, my mother told me that bakers owned dogs and they would bark at people. In order to keep them from yapping, the bakers would cook up rolls of bread and throw them to the “pups” to get them to shut up. In other words, to hush the puppies. I also hate calling the food I eat puppies. I like puppies and I certainly don't want to eat those cute puppies.

From Serious Eats,((It Was Back in 'de Wah: There's a enduring impulse when writing about Southern food to connect everything to the Civil War (boiled peanuts, for instance). In the case of hushpuppies, the story goes, Confederate soldiers making dinner around a campfire heard Yankee soldiers approaching, so they tossed their yapping dogs some fried cornmeal cakes and ordered them to "hush, puppies!" ))

Most of these stories are “old wives” tales. From Serious Eats, ((Southerners have been eating tasty balls of fried cornmeal batter for quite some time, though they didn't call them hushpuppies at first. At least two decades before "hushpuppy" appeared in print, South Carolinians were enjoying what they called "red horse bread." It wasn't red in color, and it had nothing to do with horses. Red horse was one of the common species of fish (along with bream, catfish, and trout) that were caught in South Carolina rivers and served at fish frys along the banks. ))

So more or less, it just sort of fell into that name, but the practice of making hush puppies predated the Civil War.  It was certainly a southern thing, but it has been connected more to seafood dishes now.