While this doesn't directly address your question, I notice that you seem to be mixing array/list syntax with scale syntax. Something prefixed with an '@' is an array. Sets of things in parantheses are often lists. Scalars, like a simple string, are prefixed with '$' (note that the individual elements of an array are scalars, so to refer to the first element of an array you use $arrname[0]). I suspect you want something like:

my $name = '';

printname($name);

sub printname { 
    my $name = shift;
    print "Hello, $name\n";
}
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I've used shift to remove the 1st element of the subroutine arguments array and put it into $name. You could also use my $name = $_[0]. Use my for lexical scoping for the variable $name, that way, while there may be many scalars named $name, the one in the subroutine is distinct from any others. If you don't scope your variables wisely, your progams can quickly become unmaintainable.