This Italian surname of AGRESTA was an occupational name for a miller. The name is also spelt AGRISTA, AGRIST, and GRIST. The mill, whether powered by water, wind or (occasionally) animals, was an important centre in every medieval settlement; it was normally operated by an agent of the local landowner, and individual peasants were compelled to come to him to have their corn ground into flour, a proportion of the ground corn being kept by the miller by way of payment. On the estates of the king or wealthy nobles, many servants were required whose specific duties were means of identification which developed into hereditary family names. The lord's oven, or communal oven, was the place where the villagers cooked their food. The bakers, like the millers were fond of swindling their neighbours. In many places both in England and France the peasants were fined for not baking at the lord's oven. When the great oven was hot, a bell was rung to inform the villagers to bring their bread or cakes to be baked. It was not until the 10th century that modern hereditary surnames first developed, and the use of fixed names spread, first to France, and then England, then to Germany and all of Europe. In these parts of Europe, the individual man was becoming more important, commerce was increasing and the exact identification of each man was becoming a necessity. Even today however, the Church does not recognise surnames. Baptisms and marriages are performed through use of the Christian name alone. Thus hereditary names as we know them today developed gradually during the 11th to the 15th century in the various European countries. Among the humbler classes of European society, and especially among illiterate people, individuals were willing to accept the mistakes of officials, clerks and priests as officially bestowing a new version of their surname, just as they had meekly accepted the surname they had been born with. In North America, the linguistic problems confronting immigration officials at Ellis Island in the 19th century were legendary as a prolific source of Anglicization.