Found it - it was a C module, and was available until 2.1, when many little used modules were removed. 1.6.1 declared it "obsolete": https://www.python.org/dow

Found it - it was a C module, and was available until 2.1, when many little used modules were removed. 1.6.1 declared it "obsolete": https://www.python.org/download/releases/1.6.1/ https://www.python.org/download/releases/1.6.1/ Obsolete Modules ... soundex. (Skip Montanaro has a version in Python but it won't be included in the Python release.) Looks like it was finally removed in 2.1: https://www.python.org/download/releases/2.1.3/notes/ https://www.python.org/download/releases/2.1.3/notes/ matches the NEWS file in https://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.1/ https://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.1/ - Removed the obsolete soundex module. https://pypi.org/project/Fuzzy/ https://pypi.org/project/Fuzzy/ has a modern implementation if you want to play with it.