What common words in MSM actually come from taboo? A lot of dialectical words are actually just taboo renditions of common words.
For instance:
旺子 [wang zi] in Sichuanese comes from taboo on saying the ominous, inauspicious word blood 血 and probably morphed from the actual character 衁.
Obviously blood 血 could have been used and could have been said but out of taboo a new &quot;word&quot; was created.

I found one in 汉语大词典:

倒头
谓人死。旧俗忌讳“死”字，讳称死为“倒头”。

I would imagine that 死 isn't as taboo as it used to be though.

What common MSM words now are the result of taboo?
One of the more common one in Cantonese is substitute 空 with 吉. 

'空' sounded like '凶', to avoid saying 空屋 (凶屋) , people would call an available house '吉屋' instead. As in "吉屋招租"

吉 is also used as a verb for 'leave blank' . For example: "唔識嘅題目就吉咗佢" instead of "唔識嘅題目就空咗佢"

Also:


  https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%81%BF%E8%AE%B3
  
  改字法：遇到要避諱的字時使用其他別字代替。例如：
  
  2 避漢高祖劉邦諱，“相邦”改“相國” (I only knew, in ancient time,  there's an government official title 相國 . Never heard of 相邦)
  
  6 避漢昭帝劉弗陵諱，否定詞“弗”改“不” (不 replaced 弗. Now, no one use 弗 anymore )
  
  20 孔子之名丘曾經是金朝的聖人諱，所以有些丘姓人士改为邱姓。( All because of 孔子's first name was 丘, now we have the 邱 family name co-exist with the 丘 family name )
  
  21 避明太祖朱元璋諱，「元年」改為「始年」、「原年」，「元來」改為「原來」。(I didn't even know the term 元來 existed)