In the Genesis account of Noah’s Ark, seven people enter the vessel besides Noah.
Genesis names Noah’s wife, his three sons—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—and the three sons’ wives. Together with Noah, this makes a household of eight people preserved through the flood. The passage does not give the wives’ personal names.
This total is sometimes confused with the number of animals or with the separate wording about “seven pairs” of clean animals in Genesis 7. The human count remains eight in the biblical narrative. The New Testament also refers to “eight souls” being saved through water in 1 Peter 3:20, reinforcing the traditional reading.
The story’s focus is therefore not a large population but a single family. Noah’s family becomes the human group from which the post-flood world is repopulated in the Genesis storyline.