Does a child old enough to have a preference get a say in their own name change?

Yes — a child's own views are one of the factors a court or the registrar can take into account, and the older and more mature the child, the more weight those views tend to carry. Ontario's approach to parenting and identity issues generally treats a child's own wishes as increasingly significant as they get older, though there isn't a fixed age at which a child's preference becomes automatically controlling; it is weighed alongside other best-interests factors rather than replacing them outright.

For older teenagers in particular, a clearly and consistently expressed preference about their own name — for example, wanting to use one parent's surname because that's the name they've used at school and with friends for years — can be persuasive, especially where there's a dispute between parents that the child is caught in the middle of. This is different from a very young child, whose preference, if any, carries much less independent weight. Anyone navigating a name change involving an older child's stated preference should raise it directly with a lawyer, since how that preference is presented to a court can matter.