When it comes to having 11 babies born at once, there are now two alleged hoaxes on the internet. However, if 11 babies born at one time ever becomes a reality, what would this set of multiple births be called?
The story of the 11 babies hoax began around July 2012, according to Snopes . At that time, there was a story circulating on the internet that a woman in Surat, India, had had 11 babies at once through in-vitro fertilization (IVF).
According to reports from that time from sources like TV Araj , “A 25-yr old Parsi woman gave birth to eleven (11) baby boys on 6 Feb 2012. Doctors were really surprised, shocked and glad to have a successful delivery.”
Multiple publications cited Afternoon Dispatch and Courier in India as their source for the 11 babies story.
Nevertheless, it appears that this incident of 11 babies in India was a hoax.
A few years later, the 11 babies hoax returned. This time, the woman was not from India — but Indiana. A commonly cited story for the Indiana 11 babies hoax was News Watch 33 (a satire newspaper). They released their version of the story around May — but older instances of this story exist.
In the News Watch 33 story, they claim Maria Hernandez gave birth to 11 healthy girls in early May in Indianapolis, Indiana. The 11 baby girls were all born naturally without a C-section — and each weighed between 1-1.5 pounds.
They also quoted doctors at Riley Hospital for Children that allegedly delivered the 11 babies by stating that the entire lot of 11 girls were born within 17 minutes of one another.
A second story about the 11 babies born in Indiana was covered on January 20, 2014 by the satire newspaper World News Daily Report , claiming the children were born over the course of 29 hours.
Interestingly, there are a great deal of similarities between the two stories of 11 babies. For instance, instead of having 11 boys, this woman allegedly gave birth to 11 girls — all identical twins. Also, the terms “India” and “Indiana” are spelled closely.
Despite the fact that the 11 babies stories from Indiana and India were a hoax, there may come a time when 11 babies are born at once — and the world will need a name for their group birth.
About names for multiple births, Snopes points out the following.
“ Wikipedia ‘s list of multiple births records only two instances of nonuplets (nine children born at once to the same mother) [exist].”
As it appears, there are few name suggestions that appeared online for 11 babies — but technical terms do exist and could be adopted.
According to Merriam Webster , there are at least two options for 11 babies to have a name that is part of the “triplet, septuplet, etc.,” family. Generally speaking, if more than four babies are born at once, the Latin prefix for the number is used. For instance: quadruplets, quintuplets, etc.,…
In the case of the 11 babies born at once, according to Oakton , there is a Latin prefix called “deca” (meaning “10”) and following that is the term “hendec” that means “11.”
Adding to this, there is also a prefix for “more than 10” or “eleventh” in Latin called “unden” taken from the term “undecim.”
For these reasons, if 11 babies are born at once in the future — the world could start to hear a new word used to refer to them. Since the total number in the birth is 11 and “-uplets” is traditionally the suffix added to the Latin term for the number of babies — it is possible the parents or the media will call them “undenuplets” or “henduplets.”
Moreover, undenuplets or henduplets could be referred to in shortened versions such as “und-ies” or “hend-ies.”
According to Kids Health , another term for 11 babies born at once could be the generic “super twins” definition. In their words, “‘Supertwins’ is a common term for triplets and other higher-order multiple births, such as quadruplets or quintuplets. These babies can be identical, fraternal, or a combination of both.”
The Guinness Book of World Records states that the highest number of births at once (that also survived) was not 11 — but eight. The eight children were born to the famous “Octo-Mom” Nadya Suleman on January 26, 2009 in Bellflower, California.
So far, there have been two sets of nine babies born at once (called “nonuplets”): One set born in 1971 in Sydney, Australia, and the other born in 1999 in Malaysia.
It is also a very sad fact that if there were a set of 11 babies born at once in the future, they may have an extremely low survival rate after birth. For the two sets of nonuplets born, none survived after birth longer than six days, according to reports from the New York Times and Duke University .
[Picture by Kevin Winter/ Getty Images ]