Есессно, они НЕ гномы. Они дварфы. Гномы в лотре тоже есть (на сцені не з`являється), но то другое совсем:

"J. R. R. Tolkien, in the legendarium surrounding his Elves, uses "Gnomes" as a name of the Noldor, the most gifted and technologically minded of his elvish races, in conscious exploitation of the similarity with gnomic; Gnomes is thus Tolkien's English loan-translation of Quenya Noldor, "those with knowledge"."