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Comment by russellbeattie | Hacker News Reader

"Food Valley"? Oh, come on... they could have done better! How about "Sustenance Valley"? But that brings up a secondary point... a valley?? In Holland??

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Calling anything in the Netherlands a hill or valley is a bit of a stretch. However 'Food Valley' refers to the regional nickname 'Gelderse Vallei' and is in fact a valley between the following ridges:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utrecht_Hill_Ridge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veluwe

Yeah, it's nuts. Every region and a half in the Netherlands that specializes in something calls themselves "something something valley".

That said I was once in Silicon Valley and there were hills on the left and water on the right. Not really much of a valley either.

I live in the Netherlands, and I've never heard anything like that before. I live in The Hague, maybe it's a regional thing?

I used to live in the Netherlands and I'm writing this from Utrecht. The valleys are regional:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Valley in Wageningen

2. https://www.healthvalley.nl/ in Nijmegen

3. http://www.metalvalley.eu/nl/home in Brabant

4. https://www.immunovalley.nl/ in Utrecht

5. https://legalvalleynederland.nl/ in Arnhem

6. https://www.energyvalley.nl/ in the northern provinces

If you like partying you can always go to: https://dancevalley.com/

Coming back to the Netherlands from abroad it often feels like they’re pretty good at coming up with what I would consider fairly cringeworthy names.

Yep! I myself live and work in the area (Eindhoven) that willingly calls itself "Brainport". I hear the word almost daily for ten years and I still cringe.

The pattern is so overused that organizations that never even tried to amount to something adopted it. Eg I was once at an event organized by "DSP Valley", which was never more than someone behind a desk organizing a few (mediocre) networking events: https://www.hightechcampus.nl/bedrijven/dsp-valley.

And if you looked past the water you would have seen the hills on the other side. The 'valley' is between hills on either side of the bay.

The hills in the Bay Area range from 350m to 1300m, so they're not huge, but drive/hike up over them and they definitely feel mountainous. The "Valley" can best be seen from Skyline Blvd running along the peaks to the west: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/San_Jose...

The region is called the Valley and it is - thanks to Wageningen University - a world leader in agricultural research. So the name makes sense.

I also live there; but to be honest they could rename it to "Randstad Valley" given the amount of people who are moving here from Amsterdam and Utrecht.

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