Originality is not always good. Look at the games like Fallout or StarCraft - 90% of character names and quotes are from other things like books and movies, and it's fun to find these.
My game is not very original. Or is not intended to be so. Only a few names are thinked over by me (like "Kodra" etc), most others are deducted by logic, and took from other languages. Characters are called after historical or mythical people (you'll find references to Napoleon, queen Victoria, Moebius, Dalton, Marx, Lenin, Rasputin and most other XIX-XX century famous folks), cultures are openly based on existent ones (Kitan = China, Solaria = Japan etc), there are used existing languages and alphabets (latin, futhark) and this all overally is in a world pararell to ours, flavored by some other things.
It's not really "ripping" - it's rather "intelligent use of existing knowledge".