Laravel 5 - Named route with parameter

In my web.php file, I created two routes :

Route::get('/{name}', 'PublicController@index')->name('welcome');

Route::get('stats', function () { return route('welcome', 'enrique'); });

My controller looks like:

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class PublicController extends Controller
{
  public function index($name)
  {
    return view('welcome');
  }

}

I already set up a virtual host in my local machine which is http://blog.test

When I Call http://blog.test/stats in my browser, it shows me the content of my homepage. But when I reorganize my twho route in web.php file in that way

Route::get('stats', function () { return route('welcome', 'enrique'); });

Route::get('/{name}', 'PublicController@index')->name('welcome'); 

It works fine.

Can you please explain why it behaves like that? Thanks

via Chebli Mohamed