By Daniella Gray

Copyright newsweek

A Texas father’s approach to teaching his identical quadruplet girls their names is going viral on the internet.

Jonathan Sandu, 38, posted a reel on Instagram (@thesandhucrew) where his daughters—Hannah, Lucy, Rebecca and Petra—sit in a row as he calls out each one of their names repeatedly until she makes eye contact.

Sandu and his wife, Mercedes, 36, were already parents to two young boys—Luke, now five and Aaron, two—when their family plans suddenly changed.

Jonathan and Mercedes Sandu’s two out of four quadruplet daughters Hannah and Lucy sitting on the floor looking up at the camera.

“In the fall of 2023, we started talking about stopping after two,” Jonathan told Newsweek. “[Mercedes] had just been promoted at work and the thought of taking care of more than two kids seemed overwhelming. Then [she] got pregnant.”

Initially, the couple braced themselves for life with three children under four. What they didn’t expect was that Mercedes was carrying quadruplets—without fertility treatments, family history or advanced maternal age as a factor.

“It didn’t seem real,” Jonathan said. “We’ve all known twins and most of us have encountered triplets, but quadruplets seemed unfathomable.”

Identical quadruplets are among the rarest naturally occurring births in the world, with estimates ranging from one in 10 million to one in 15 million pregnancies.

“We quickly learned that it would be a very high-risk pregnancy for both the babies and my wife,” Jonathan explained. “The doctors suspected—and later confirmed—the girls were monochorionic, which means they shared a placenta, and were at much higher risk for complications. It seemed like one piece of overwhelming news after another.”

But the turning point came when friends who had struggled with infertility reminded the couple of their good fortune.

“What I viewed as overwhelming was a dream situation for them,” Jonathan said. “My mindset completely shifted and I realized, we are truly lucky to be in this situation.”

In May 2024, the Sandhus welcomed four healthy identical girls: Hannah, Lucy, Rebecca and Petra.

Bringing quadruplet newborns home was “weeks of intense sleep deprivation,” Jonathan said, until he and Mercedes—both engineers—figured out a feeding schedule that allowed them to take shifts, enabling them to get around four to five hours of sleep at a time.

“We started viewing everything as a logistical problem,” Jonathan said. “We’ve now reached a point where we live ‘normal’ lives, with our individual hobbies, we both travel fairly often for work, and we find routines to make it work.”

As the girls grew older, it was important for both parents to help their daughters recognize themselves as individuals—then Jonathan got thinking.

“I was trying to think ways to teach them their names,” he said. “So I sat them down and would say each name until they looked up and made eye contact, then I said ‘hi’ in a tone that soothes them. It was pretty cute, so after a few rounds, I thought I’d film it.”

Jonathan’s reel has been viewed almost 10 million times and received over 910,000 likes.

“Your loving voice will have impact as well! Great job daddy,” one user commented.

“Rebecca knows her name, she’s just practicing for when she’s in trouble and can’t hear you,” another joked.

A third wrote, “As a Petra myself, I love seeing my name being used. I’m used to seeing older ladies with my name.”

Jonathan said he was unprepared for how many people had opinions about the girls’ names.

“I had no idea people had such strong negative feelings on what I thought were benign names,” he said. “It seems some think they’re ‘old’ names… or that Rebecca will feel left out because her name has three syllables. But hey, that’s social media these days and some people will find any reason to be negative.”

Now, with the girls all being one, the method is working—mostly. “They will all respond to their names, but sometimes they will look up when another’s name is called,” Jonathan said. “We’re not sure if they’re confused or if they just have FOMO [fear of missing out] and want to know why their sister is being called.”