Questions & Answers about Họ cuốn bản đồ.
Here, họ means they.
It is a third-person plural pronoun and does not show gender, so it can refer to they for any group of people. In Vietnamese, this pronoun is common in writing and neutral narration. In everyday speech, speakers also often use a noun phrase or kinship term instead of họ, depending on context.
Yes. Họ can also mean surname or family name.
But in Họ cuốn bản đồ, it clearly means they, because it appears in the subject position before the verb. If it meant surname, the sentence would not make sense this way.
In this sentence, cuốn is a verb meaning to roll up or to wind.
So Họ cuốn bản đồ means that they are performing the action of rolling the map.
A useful thing to know is that cuốn can also be a classifier in other sentences, especially for bound books or notebooks, as in một cuốn sách = a book. Here, though, it is definitely a verb.