Was it Ireland...?

[Aldagrim Proudfoot]

It's impossible to create so many names and places.

What about the people who make Dungeons and Dragons? I'm not saying it's not a nice idea about M-E, but it's not impossible to create a fantasy world. After all, he worked on Silmarrillion for about 60 years(notebooks from c.1917 were found and his son had to put them all together). Personally, I think Tolkien was a genius and created, as he put it, a Secondary World.