Yes, they're colloquially referred to as dwarves, but the same games point out the fact that the name is a misnomer ascribed to them by ignorant humans who are going by your logic - "They live underground and make machines, therefore dwarves." They're another variant of mer, same as the Altmer or Dunmer.
Giving dwarves a different name is not going to magically make them not dwarves. In fact, the TvTropes listing said "these may be under different names, but still count as generic fantasy." If anything, TES simply made them a bit taller, and that's debatable, since some texts reference them as "large children with beards." No matter how hard you want it to be, an underground steampunk race of golden armored, bearded men cannot be considered anything but straight Tolkien photocopying.
Rushy, putting the words "zany and different" in sarcastic quotation marks is not an argument. Can you provide us with an example of a setting that you think is truly unique, and could be described as zany and different without the quotes?
Oh, you must have forgotten about our earlier engagement (or purposely buried the memory of you slinking away from it). There is no such thing as a truly unique setting. Anything a human mind create is based on something that already existed. This is why Saddam's argument that Oblivion is bland and generic, but that Morrowind somehow isn't, is blatantly false. They're both generic fantasy games. In fact, Oblivion is more unique in that its combat system is closer to a FPS than Morrowind's obvious D&D ripoff.