With all due respect to Charles III, he won't be the longest tenured King in England this week. Not even close.

Tennessee Titans running back Derrick Henry's "King Henry" nickname predates Charles' coronation by more than a decade. It predates his two All-Pro honors, three Pro Bowl nods, the 2020 NFL Offensive Player of the Year award and the 2,000-yard season with the Titans, not to mention his Heisman Trophy and national championship at Alabama — even before he set the national high school record for rushing yards in 2012.

The nickname shouldn't require explanation. His surname is Henry. England had a few famous kings named Henry. Word association does its job.

But there's more to this story. Quite a bit more, actually. As Henry's Titans (2-3) get ready to face the Baltimore Ravens (3-2) at 8:30 a.m. CT Sunday at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, it's time to tell the story of why Derrick Henry is the King.

Mufasa . . . Simba . . . Derrick?

Parade Magazine named Henry its high school football player of the year in 2013. At the time, he told Parade the nickname sprouted from his love of "The Lion King," the Disney animated classic released in 1994, about six months after Henry was born.

That story has never been disputed. Bobby Ramsay, Henry's coach at Yulee High School in Florida, told The Tennessean he remembers Henry making references to characters like Mufasa and Simba all the time, and Henry told Parade it still made him sad every time he saw Mufasa die.

Well, a decade later, it might be time to retire that story to the night sky with Mufasa and all of the great kings of the past. The Tennessean recently asked Henry if this story was true.

Not only did he say no, he doesn't even remember telling it.

Still, like Simba, Henry couldn't outrun becoming king. The title was always going to find him eventually.

Why is Derrick Henry's nickname 'King Henry'? A brief history

Before Henry was King Henry, he was Shocka. Henry's grandmother Gladys coined the nickname because her grandson's birth was a shock to the whole family. Zac Camp, one of Henry's close friends and high school teammates, says pretty much everyone in Nassau County, Florida, knows who Shocka is, and that's what close friends and family still call him.

The King Henry moniker started gaining traction about the time he started chasing the high school rushing record. Ramsay said he remembers the name on banners and signs in the students' section at home games. It was used in local TV news graphics. By the time national media outlets started covering Henry's chase to break Ken Hall's 59-year-old record, the name had stuck.

And somewhere in the middle of the hullabaloo, Henry embraced it.

When he first joined Twitter, now known as X, in 2010, his account name was @ShockaFlocka. Shortly thereafter, he changed it to @ShockaFlocka_2, getting his jersey number in there. But sometime between March and April 2012, in his junior year, he rebranded the account to @KingHenry_2, the online alias he still holds today.

Titans supporters know Henry today as a quiet, humble, workmanlike figure. Not exactly the kind of personality who would brand himself The King. But according to Ramsay, Henry was a talkative, outgoing kid. The first time he won a local award as a ninth grader, Ramsay remembers, Henry went up on stage to give a speech and "you couldn't shut him up."

"He used to have a lot of fun with those things," Ramsay said. "And then over time, by the time he was at the end of high school, he had been interviewed so much that he kind of changed a little bit. And then he went to Alabama where they teach you to hate the media. But when you’d see him in the locker room, he really was just one of the guys."

Henry briefly added a third nickname while at Alabama. At the 2014 Sugar Bowl, Spanish-language commentator Pablo Viruega dubbed Henry "El Tractorcito," meaning "the little tractor." That followed him for a little while, especially on his quest for the 2015 Heisman Trophy.

But when he emerged as one of the best running backs in the NFL, King Henry eclipsed El Tractorcito.

The gravity of the nickname

People don't get royal nicknames just because they share a name with a royal. No one remembers Titans legend Eddie George as "King George." Hall of Famer Earl Campbell was nicknamed The Tyler Rose, not "The Duke of Earl."

There's a small collection of kings who've survived the nickname in American sports: LeBron James, Richard Petty and Felix Hernandez come to mind. You have to be larger than life for people to call you The King and for them to mean it.

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However prematurely the nickname was deployed, Henry has backed it up. No one has more rushing yards or touchdowns than Henry since he got to the NFL, and he's also the NFL's leader in playoff carries and rushing yards in that span.

There's no reason for him not to be called The King. With every one of the 3,905 carries he has since the start of high school, Henry has justified his throne.

Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com. Follow Nick on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, @nickusss.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Why is Derrick Henry called 'King Henry'? The nickname's backstory