"Ripped off" - no. "Based on", yes. But that's a different thing.

The shops are full of books which can resonably be termed, "ripped off" from Tolkien. We've all seen them - they always have a bit on the cover saying "Not since Tolkien" or "In the tradition of Tolkien" or something like that. No real grounding in folklore or anthropolgy or whatever, they've just read Tolkien, or maybe not even that, just other books written by people who have read Tolkien.

But Tolkien had never seen any books like that, because they didn't exist.

"JRR couldn't even be bothered coming up with his own character names..." That's to miss the point of what he was doing there, which was to provide roots on the real world for his fiction. I always remember the delight I felt, on a trip to the Czech Republic, to find a statue of "Radagast" half way up a mountain, and an excellent beer called after him. He's a local legendary character, sort of nature spirit, who's been honoured around that part of the world for the past few thousand years, before Tolkien found the name and decided he'd made a good wizard.