That may not be doing what you expect! Consider:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

for my $tail ('Z.z', '1.z', 'a(x)z', 'aaa', 'aa_', 'xxx@') {
    my $str = "name = $tail";
    
    if ($str =~ /name\s*=\s*([A-Za-z].+\w)/) {
        print "Matched >$1< in >$str<\n";
    } else {
        print "No match for >$str<\n";
    }
}
[download]

Prints:

Matched >Z.z< in >name = Z.z<
No match for >name = 1.z<
Matched >a(x)z< in >name = a(x)z<
Matched >aaa< in >name = aaa<
Matched >aa_< in >name = aa_<
Matched >xxx< in >name = xxx@<
[download]

[A-Za-z] matches a single letter. .+ matches at least one characters and as many as it possibly can such that the remainder of the regular expression matches. \w matches a single alphanumeric or underscore character.