Shem is the son of Noah traditionally associated with the Semitic peoples in Genesis. Genesis 10 and 11 trace a line from Shem through Arpachshad and later ancestors toward Abraham.
The biblical genealogy makes Shem the eponymous ancestor of the “sons of Shem,” a phrase later connected with the term Semite. In modern scholarship, “Semitic” is primarily a linguistic classification covering languages such as Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Akkadian; it is not a precise biblical ethnic label.
Shem is one of Noah’s three sons, alongside Ham and Japheth. Genesis assigns each son a separate genealogical sphere in the Table of Nations, but later interpretations expanded these associations into broad maps of the peoples known to ancient readers. The answer is Shem for the traditional genealogical association, not a claim that all modern speakers of Semitic languages share a single biological ancestry.