Named after Sem, the son of Noah, language family belonging to Afro-Asiatic. The oldest attested language is Akkadian in ancient Mesopotamia (2500–600 BC). Other branches: NorthWest Semitic (Phoenician, Ugaritic, Hebrew, Aramaic), South Semitic...

In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic (from the Biblical "Shem", Hebrew: שם, translated as "name", Arabic: ساميّ) was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages. This family...