The Aramaeans, also Arameans, are a Northwest Semitic semi-nomadic and pastoralist people who originated in what is now modern Syria (Biblical Aram) during the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

Large groups migrated to Mesopotamia where they intermingled with the native Akkadian (Assyrian and Babylonian) population.The Aramaeans never had a unified empire; they were divided into independent kingdoms all across the Near East.

After the Bronze Age collapse, their political influence was confined to a number of Syro-Hittite states, which were entirely absorbed into the Neo-Assyrian Empire by the 8th century BCE.By contrast, their Aramaic language came to be the lingua franca of the entire Fertile Crescent, by Late Antiquity developing into the literary languages such as Syriac and Mandaic.

Scholars even have used the term "Aramaization" for the process by which Assyro-Babylonian peoples became Aramaic-speaking during the later Iron Age.

Today, members of the Syriac Orthodox Church claim to be descendants of the Aramaeans.