COGNITIVE ENTITY REFERENCE RECOGNITION

Methods, computer program products, and systems are presented. The methods include, for instance: monitoring one or more message of the conversation between multiple users for an entity reference; detecting the entity reference in a message in the conversation. An entity reference list stores previously established alternate name referring to a user in the conversation. By analyzing the message and following messages in the conversation for relevance of and sentiment to the entity reference, the entity reference is evaluated and if acceptable, the entity reference list is updated with the entity reference as a new alternate name to identify the user in subsequent messages.