What are 13 twins called?

What Are 13 Twins Called? Unraveling the Names of Large Multiple Births

While most of us are familiar with terms like twins, triplets, or even quadruplets, few know what to call pregnancies with extremely high numbers of babies. When it comes to 13 babies, the term used is tredecaplets. It’s a word most will never encounter in real life—and for good reason.

Multiple births with more than four or five babies are exceptionally rare, and a pregnancy with 13 fetuses has never been documented in medical history. The term "tredecaplets" comes from Latin roots—“tredeci” meaning thirteen—and follows the same naming pattern as twins, triplets, and so on. Beyond that, you’ve got quattrodecaplets (14), quindecaplets (15), and sexdecaplets (16), though these are purely theoretical terms at this scale.

In reality, the highest number of babies ever born alive in one pregnancy is eight—known as octuplets. That record was set in 2009 with the Suleman family. Higher-order multiple pregnancies like tredecaplets are not only unheard of but are also considered biologically improbable due to the physical limitations of human gestation. Even carrying triplets or quadruplets poses serious health risks, so pregnancies with such high numbers are typically reduced in clinical settings to protect the mother and improve survival odds for the babies.

Still, it’s fascinating to explore the language of multiples. From twins to theoretical tredecaplets, the naming system shows how science builds on patterns—even when describing scenarios that exist more in curiosity than in reality. So while you’ll likely never meet a set of 13 siblings born at once, now you know what they’d be called.