Shem was Noah's son traditionally regarded as the ancestor of the Semitic peoples.
Genesis names Shem alongside his brothers Ham and Japheth. It later traces a genealogy from Shem through several generations to Abram, who is introduced in Genesis 11. The biblical genealogy makes Shem especially important in the ancestry leading to the patriarchal narratives.
The English term “Semitic” was formed from Shem's name and was historically used for related languages and peoples. In modern scholarship, Semitic primarily describes a language family that includes Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, and Akkadian, rather than a single biological or political people.
Traditional classifications sometimes call Shem the ancestor of peoples associated with the Near East, while Ham and Japheth receive different regional associations. These later schemes should not be treated as a precise modern map of human ancestry. The answer is based on the traditional interpretation of Genesis's genealogy.