Did you have last names on these contacts? I'm having the same issue.
I don't think it has anything to do with gmail as I didn't have an account until I purchased the droid. The rep took my old phone and the droid to a computer in the back to copy my contacts into the droid. When I got home I noticed that I had 28 fewer contacts.
It seems to combine proper names with nicknames with nicknames being the title contact.
One set of my contacts that were combined were Jim and James - Jim being the contact name and his and James' info in the same contact. The James contact had disappeared.
Since I had more contact info for James I edited the first name from Jim to James and deleted Jims phone number. Then I created a new contact for Jim.
The plot thickens... 
When I opened my contact list the contact for James now says Jamie. When I click on the contact then click edit the first name is back to James, but still would show up in the list as "Jamie" - I have no idea where Jamie came from - I have no other contacts with that name.
All the problems stopped once I put a last name in each contact... even Jamie magically disappeared.
Also, when my contacts were imported into the droid I received 2 new contacts. Both had 2 digits as the first name and one digit as the phone #. I just deleted those.
Anybody have any ideas what happened?
Now back to finding my missing contacts 
I know, me too. I also wish the separation and fix wasn't manual. Some of my contacts have a lot of information. Hmmm.... Now that I say that, do you know if you can copy and paste?
I gave up trying to figure out who was missing. I'll figure it out when I try to call or text whoever it is 
You know, I would imagine that the rep would be trained to check the number of contacts on the old phone vs new phone. That's how you know that the transfer was successful. I should have checked myself before I left the store. I felt bad for the rep. She was crazy busy.
