Question: I’ve seen various different spellings of his name. Konrad or Conrad or Veidt or Weidt. Which one is correct? And what’s this “Connie” business all about? Isn’t that a girl’s name?
Answer: His birth certificate (which you can see in Lebensbilder; scan here) shows his full name as Hans Walter Conrad Veidt, with “Conrad” underlined as his name of address.
As for “Connie:” his friends called him “Conny” (the German diminuitive of “Conrad,” which can be unisex, BTW) or “Connie,” and we have surviving letters and telegrams from him where he’s signed them as “Connie.” You *bet* he was told by Anglophones it was a girl’s name, endless times–and it says something about his attitude that he never saw this as a bad thing. He disliked sexism and never looked down on feminine things, to put it mildly. But that’s another trivia post entirely…