Since the end of the eighteenth century, the group of peoples who spread, probably from the Arabian peninsula, to Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine around 3000 BCE — and, before 700 BC from southern Arabia to Abyssinia, on the opposite African mainland — have been designated as Semites. They were so called after Shem, who, according to the first Book of Moses, chapter 10, was the eldest son of Noah.
Source: tatoeba (8118385)