Names and Gnomenclature.

 There is a lot of codification in the names of fantasy characters. George  Martin employed consonant shifts and an almost phonetic approach in adapting common names for his characters in his Song of Ice and Fire novels ('Eddard', 'Podrick', 'Sersei'). Tolkien took hi from Old Norse and Anglo Saxon histories, depending on the culture of his people - and when it came to Hobbits, he mixed the old with the contemporary, adding evocative descriptors and alliteration to give them their own distinctive sounds: Bilbo, Frodo, Samwise, Odo, Bungo, Meriadoc, Gerontius, Belladonna.

The last name - that of Bilbo's ill-fated mother, is of course a botanical name, and it's the names of wild flowers that B.B. uses for his little grey men: Dodder is a vine-like weed, Baldmoney an aromatic mountain plant, Cloudberry a raspberry-like fruit, and Sneezewort a hardy wildflower. Some of these are edible, some have medicinal properties, others known for their toughness or resilience, and yet others for their beauty.

I like the convention of botanical names for Gnomes. They divorce themselves from the human and cleave instead to the natural world. There are dozens of names for some plants, and hundreds of varieties; some names are almost lost , or so regional as to be obscure, and if Gnomes are not numerous, in a fantasy setting they needn't have linear surnames to distinguish themselves - in fact, I'd recommend against the convention. But to make it slightly codified, I've taken to using tree or weed names for males, and floral or herbal names for females. It'll do for now.

Above: Houndstongue and Primula.  

Recommended sourcebook: Culpeper's Complete Herbal (1653), via Project Gutenberg