Your uncle might be in the name

Before the brewery, before the road signs, there may have been an uncle.

The Oxford surname dictionary traces Neame to eme, the Middle English word for uncle. Its explanation is that an N moved across a word boundary, after phrases ending in n. The older word goes back to Old English ēam.

Older writers tried other explanations, including French nain, meaning dwarf. The modern Oxford entry favours uncle. It explains the word, rather than proving that everyone called Neame shares one ancestor.

By 1891, the name was strongly concentrated in Kent. Follow it into the villages and the language question turns into people with weddings, fields and cows to leave in their wills.