Killing processes by name

[Carl Parrish]

Okay is there any way to kill a process by name? Since I've update to RH 
  7.2 I been noticing that I had problems with mozilla or other apps. 
Today I finally thought to check for java_vm processes. there are 
*hundres* of them they aren't dying I don't know if that's just because 
I have so much memory the garbage collector simply isn't clearing them 
or what but I want them dead and I don't wont to have to type in ever 
process number. is there a way I can just say kill all java_vm processes?

Carl P.