The poetic language of the сhivalric novel of the 12–13th centuries is closely connected with the courtly culture of the High Middle Ages. One of the methods of studying it for the historian of language is to discuss the names of “non-chivalrous” weapons in the Middle High German language, their nominative potential and peculiarities of usage in the literature of this period. This paper studies the сhivalric novels “Iwein”, “Perceval”, “Tristan”, and the epic poem “Nibelungenlied” with the intent to establish the connection between the language of сhivalric novel and chivalric culture from the standpoint of the dichotomy “chivalrous – non-chivalrous”.