The Germans have a word for this: Homophonieflucht (flight of homophones). It means that when you have two words that sound the same, one will eventually be avoided to prevent misunderstandings. One example I have in mind is that the German word Strauß means ostrich and it used to also had the now archaic meaning of “fight” I only heard of in this historical linguistics class. It doesn’t mean fight anymore to avoid misunderstandings.

I wasn’t aware of the social implications this effect can have tho.