Did bronze used to mean "you're pretty decent at the game" back in season 1?

I remember they were using a elo system where you have to be above 1200 elo to even be bronze, and everyone started at 1200 elo. Therefore, in order to even be in bronze, you had to be better than 50% of the players back then. Anything below 1200 elo, had an extra rank called "unranked". If that's the case, that'd mean you were the "better half of the population of LoL players who touched ranked." My memories of back then was vague, is there anything I got wrong?