How did the cartoon character Bugs Bunny get his name?

In 1940, Warner Bros. asked its illustrators for sketches of a “tall, lanky,
mean rabbit” for a cartoon titled “Hare-um Scare-um.” Someone in the
office labelled the submission from cartoonist “Bugs” Hardaway as
“Bugs’ Bunny” and sent it on. Although his drawings weren’t used, the
words that labelled them were given to the rabbit star of the 1940 car-
toon “A Wild Hare,” which introduced “Bugs Bunny.”