Semitic people
Obsolete term for an ethnic group in the Middle East / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Semitic people or Semites is an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group[2][3][4][5] associated with people of the Middle East, including Arabs, Jews, Akkadians, and Phoenicians. The terminology is now largely unused outside the grouping "Semitic languages" in linguistics.[6][7][8] First used in the 1770s by members of the Göttingen school of history, this biblical terminology for race was derived from Shem (Hebrew: שֵׁם), one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis,[9] together with the parallel terms Hamites and Japhetites.
In archaeology, the term is sometimes used informally as "a kind of shorthand" for ancient Semitic-speaking peoples.[8]