What you more likely want is:

        $name=~s/(\w*?)(\s).*/$1/eig;
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I don't think so. yet more cargo cult regexing, huh? *sigh*

Let's strike all the unnecessary cruft.

• He wants +, not *. What if his string started with a space?
• The ? is unnecessary
• I see no reason to replace \w+ with .*
• The /e modifier is totally useless, though by accident, harmless
• The /i modifier is useless
• If you use .*, then the /g modifier is useless

Granted, the modifiers you inherited from the OP, but for the rest I see very little excuse.

IMO this is what the OP is after:

$name=~s/(\w+)(\s)(\w+)/$1/g;
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or even

$name=~s/(\w+)\s\w+/$1/g;
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though it would likely also do what he wants without the /g.