Japheth /ˈdʒeɪfɛθ/ (Hebrew: יֶפֶת Yép̄eṯ, in pausa יָפֶת‎ Yā́p̄eṯ; Greek: Ἰάφεθ Iápheth; Latin: Iafeth, Iapheth, Iaphethus, Iapetus; Arabic: يافث Yāfith) is one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis, in which he plays a role in the story of Noah's drunkenness and the curse of Ham, and subsequently in the Table of Nations as the ancestor of the peoples of the Aegean Sea, Anatolia, Caucasus, Greece, and elsewhere in Eurasia.

[8] Most modern writers accept Shem–Ham–Japheth as reflecting their birth order, but this is not always the case: Moses and Rachel also appear at the head of such lists despite explicit descriptions of them as younger siblings.

[11][12] His sons and grandsons associate him with the geographic area comprising the Aegean Sea, Greece, the Caucasus, and Anatolia: Ionia/Javan, Rhodes/Rodanim, Cyprus/Kittim, and other places in the Eastern Mediterranean region.

[14] This view accorded with the understanding of the origin of the Book of Genesis, which was seen as having been composed in stages beginning with the time of King Solomon, when the Philistines still existed (they vanished from history after the Assyrian conquest of Canaan).

According to the Roman–Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews, I.VI.122 (Whiston): Japhet, the son of Noah, had seven sons: they inhabited so, that, beginning at the mountains Taurus and Amanus, they proceeded along Asia, as far as the river Tanais (Don), and along Europe to Cadiz; and settling themselves on the lands which they light upon, which none had inhabited before, they called the nations by their own names.The Sefer haYashar ("Book of Jasher"), written by Talmudic rabbis in the 17th century, attributed some new names for Japheth's grandchildren which are not found in the Hebrew Bible, and provided a much more detailed genealogy.

[15] In the 7th century AD, Hispano–Roman archbishop and scholar Isidore of Seville wrote his noted encyclopedic-historical treatise titled Etymologiae, in which he traces the origins of most of the European peoples back to Japheth.

[16][17] Scholars in almost every European nation continued to repeat and develop Isidore of Seville's assertion of descent from Noah through Japheth into the 19th century.

[4] William Shakespeare's play Henry IV, Part II contains a wry comment about people who claim to be related to royal families.

[19][22] According to Abū'l-Ghāzī who wrote the 17th-century ethnographic treatise Shajara-i Tarākima ("Genealogy of the Turkmen"), the descendants of Ham went to Africa, Shem to Iran, and Japheth went to the banks of the Itil and Yaik rivers, and had eight sons named Turk, Khazar, Saqlab, Rus, Ming, Chin, Kemeri, and Tarikh.