You can use "glob" wildcards in the argument to -name, provided that you quote them or backslash-escape them (so they get passed to find intact rather than being expanded by bash) For example, we might want to search for README files with extensions:

$ find /usr/share/doc -name README\*
/usr/share/doc/iproute2-2.4.7/README.gz
/usr/share/doc/iproute2-2.4.7/README.iproute2+tc.gz
/usr/share/doc/iproute2-2.4.7/README.decnet.gz
/usr/share/doc/iproute2-2.4.7/examples/diffserv/README.gz
/usr/share/doc/pilot-link-0.9.6-r2/README.gz
/usr/share/doc/gnome-pilot-conduits-0.8/README.gz
/usr/share/doc/gimp-1.2.2/README.i18n.gz
/usr/share/doc/gimp-1.2.2/README.win32.gz
/usr/share/doc/gimp-1.2.2/README.gz
/usr/share/doc/gimp-1.2.2/README.perl.gz
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