We indirectly addressed this by tweaking the Find dialog in 2.7 (sorry I did not post back when it released).
There are radio buttons for Element vs. Instruction (mnemonic - your specific issue points to needing to know the mnemonic for contacts). See the attachment.
We added a 3rd radio button for Contacts, and its drop-down shows the contact token graphic, not the mnemonic. What's better about contact token search, is it would match all 3 bool stack operators for the same contact (e.g. STR/AND/OR), which is probably what you want anyway (you don't care if a >= contact is used as the first contact in a rung (STRGE) or 2nd in-series contact in a rung (ANDGE), just that it's a >= contact.