In principle, $\mathcal{N}$ gives you the number of supercharges in your theory. There are, however, cases with more than one irreducible (pseudo-)real spinor representations. If you have $N$ charges in one and $N'$ charges in the other representation, you denote the total number of charges as $\mathcal{N}=(N,N')$. Examples would be $\mathcal{N}=(1,1)$ type IIA supergravity in ten dimensions or $\mathcal{N}=(2,2)$ supergravity in six dimensions.
Frederic Brünner
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