The phrase "a reference to someone" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when discussing or mentioning a person indirectly in a conversation or text.
Example: "In her speech, she made a reference to someone who inspired her throughout her career."
Alternatives: "an allusion to someone" or "a mention of someone".
So instead of William Henry Hance, which was the name of the man seeking the stay, the order contained a reference to someone named Larry Grant Lonchar.
Ms. Friesen also wrote that Mr. Malike appeared to be working with others, citing a reference to someone in Pakistan who would pay.
For example, the head chef of Heston Blumenthal's Dinner will only give a reference to someone who has worked there for two years.
Anne Bulford, the BBC's managing director for operations and finance, says that may have been a reference to someone from HR. Q: Is Lucy Adams' pay as director of HR inflating pay across the BBC? Hall says Adams is leaving.
One of their letters, stolen from a second source, included a reference to someone whom Schwarzkoppen called "this scoundrel of a D.," and who had offered "plans of Nice" — though the whole thing may have been a bantering reference to another lover.
Much more disabling are some of the lapses in idiom, Americanisms crawling into the English mindset as in a reference to someone being "on the football team", or out-of-character slang such as the Revd Dr Henry Montagu Butler, the august and venerable master of Trinity - AC Benson compared him to "the Almighty in Blake's designs for Job" - opining that Hardy's prize pupil "sounds a bit dodgy".
Among the e-mail messages was one with a curious reference to someone named Costner, whom a person close to the case said that Mr. Birkenfeld had identified as the actor Kevin Costner.
A husband and wife who behaved so courteously toward the world must have ways of dealing with awkwardness like this — a subtle reference to someone similar they'd encountered, or perhaps just a benign dismissal of the man's opinions.
Ramirez, who still insisted he had no gang ties, asked to be identified as "paisa" or "paisano," a common reference to someone who is Mexican but unaffiliated with any gang.
Similarly, the phrase "grass mud horse" – cǎo ní mǎ – sounds almost identical to an obscene reference to someone's mother.
There are shocks that roll right off him, as with his casual reference to someone's having "a job in a store where people buy new hair and breasts after theirs fall off".
