"a talker," especially an agreeable or interesting one, 1836; see conversational + -ist. Conversationist was used from 1806 in the sense "a talker, one addicted to talking."
Entries linking to conversationalist
conversational adj.
"of, pertaining to, or characteristic of conversation," 1779, from conversation + -al (1).
-ist
word-forming element meaning "one who does or makes," also used to indicate adherence to a certain doctrine or custom, from French -iste and directly from Latin -ista (source also of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian -ista), from Greek agent-noun ending -istes, which is from -is-, ending of the stem of verbs in -izein, + agential suffix -tes.
Variant -ister (as in chorister, barrister) is from Old French -istre, on false analogy of ministre. Variant -ista is from Spanish, popularized in American English 1970s by names of Latin-American revolutionary movements.