Python function for testing similarity between the first authors in two article author fields

similar_first_author.py

def similar_first_author(author1, author2):
    """Determine whether two first authors have the same names.

    Since there can be various fluctuations in first names and initials, we will
    only check the first word in the author string and the first letter of the
    second word. Although the second word is usually the first name, there will
    be exceptions for multi-word last names, but this will be a small minority
    and still passes our test. In case there is just a single word, use just that.
    """
    author1 = author1.lower().decode('utf-8')
    author2 = author2.lower().decode('utf-8')

    to_replace = {
        # Spell out umlauts phonetically.
        u"ü": "ue"
    }
    for tr in to_replace:
        author1 = author1.replace(tr, to_replace[tr])
        author2 = author2.replace(tr, to_replace[tr])

    # Replace any remaining Unicode with the ASCII equivalents.
    author1 = unidecode(author1)
    author2 = unidecode(author2)

    try:
        first1 = author1.split()[0].lower().strip(',')
        first2 = author2.split()[0].lower().strip(',')
    except IndexError:
        return False

    try:
        second1 = author1.split()[1].lower().strip(',')
        second2 = author2.split()[1].lower().strip(',')
        return first1 == first2 and second1[0] == second2[0]
    except IndexError:
        return first1 == first2