If he was born in Sicily about a century ago, no way would they have spoken Italian unless they were very cultivated. Otherwise the only language would be dialect.

In Italian that would be testa or capo di fuoco. Both testa and capo mean head, and fuoco is fire. Redheads and especially light brown hair and green eyes are less rare in Sicily than one would think, because there's quite some Northern European blood.

Where I come from red hair is very common around hairdressers :-). My eyebrows look a bit like Wilson's except way darker, so I never was tempted to paint my hair - it would be too much of a contrast.