The modern Gelsenkirchen district of Schalke owes its name to a medieval noble family. Henricus miles de Schadeleke, or Heinrich von Schalke as he would be known today, was a noble knight and with it the first recorded bearer of the Schalke name (and that as early as 1246). There was also a knight called Cesarius van Schedelike. The noble family of Schalke had three Pferdepramen (devices for taming horses) in its coat of arms. It died out in the male line in the 17th century.

The spellings Scedelike, Scadeleke, Scadelik, Schadelick, Schalicke, Schalecke, Schalcke and finally Schalke developed over the centuries in the same way as the rest of written German. The village of Schalke was probably named after its location. Freely translated, Schadel-ike means "area around the skull" or "settlement in a skull-shaped area". This was separated on all four sides from the neighbouring communes of Gelsenkirchen, Bulmke, Bismarck and Rotthausen by the Ah, Schwarzbach and Bullenbeke (Sellmannsbach) streams in what was lower-lying marshland.

In 1818 Schalke boasted a grand total of just 198 inhabitants, but the population grew rapidly as industrialisation advanced. Coal, iron and steel quickly led to the urbanisation of the village. Consolidation Colliery, known to the locals simply as Consol, and its supply industry needed scores of workers.

Initially, from around 1860 to 1880, the new settlers came from the surrounding area. In 1871 the "village" numbered 3,763 inhabitants. Four years later, this had doubled, to 7,808. Enterprises from a host of new industries, such as Küppersbusch (stoves and ovens), Glas- und Spiegelmanufactur Schalke (glass and mirrors), Chemische Industrie Schalke (chemicals), and Hermann Franken (sheet metal and galvanised products), all settled in Schalke.

This meant more and more workers were needed, and they were sought all over the country. The call was heard as far away as East and West Prussia and Masuria, and increasing numbers of people from the easternmost parts of Germany and Poland found their way to the Ruhr valley and thus also to Schalke.

In 1875 the neighbouring "village" of Gelsenkirchen, comprising today's districts of Altstadt and Neustadt and a population of 11,292, was granted its town charter. For years it resisted unification with an increasingly industrial Schalke. In 1876 the communes of Schalke, Bulmke, Hessler, Hüllen and Braubauerschaft (now Bismarck) joined together to form their own authority under the name of Schalke, which now had far more inhabitants than Gelsenkirchen.

Owing to the rapid process of industrialisation more and more enterprises located in the various communes and soon began spreading out beyond the Schalke boundaries. The pressure on Gelsenkirchen increased, and in 1903 a series of municipality incorporation decisions in the Ruhr led to the creation of the city of Gelsenkirchen, which in terms of population and economic power became one of the largest cities in the then German Reich overnight.