Early Nami One Piece

Beginning nami in one piece with the character design is a very lengthy process

 Nami's design and personality (and arguably her background story as well) is the result of a long process with several other similar characters. The first apparent character in the process of developing towards Nami was Silk in Romance Dawn V.1, who was then followed by another girl called Ann in Romance Dawn V.2. Each one of the girls had her own personality which seemed to have been placed into Nami's overall design. An unclear matter of the scar that Nami inflicts on herself is seen in a panel of artwork in the One Piece Loguetown Novel. When Nami got angry with Arlong, she stabbed herself in the arm where his crews flag was with a knife several times. Even when the tattoo was removed, there remained the scar.
The new tattoo Nami gained replaced her old one, but covered the scar. However, in the Novel a panel of Nami in a bath is seen with the scar left over from stabbing herself on her back, the new tattoo did not cover the scar at all. Since the Loguetown novel contained elements of original storyline Oda did not add, there is the possibility that this was an early design idea. However it is unclear if this was Oda's intended idea, as the novel is not put together by Oda but only based on his ideas and his artwork.

Nami was based on two of Eiichiro Oda's earlier characters named Silk and Ann, two characters from Oda's one-shot manga Romance Dawn. In these stories, Silk and Ann were parentless and had tragic pasts. Oda designed Nami as a human girl. At first, Oda wanted Nami to use a large axe, but the author replaced it with a pole-based weapon.

Design
Nami is recognized by her fashion styles, which changes throughout One Piece. She was first introduced wearing a white-and-blue striped shirt, an orange mini-skirt and orange boots.[1] Throughout the series, Nami is commonly seen wearing a shirt or bikini top, a skirt and high-heeled sandals. Nami often wears blue tattoos throughout the course of the series; the first is a symbol of Arlong's crew which is later removed and replaced with a symbol of a tangerine and pinwheel. Eventually Nami starts wearing earrings and has her hair grown down her back.

Voice actresses
In the Japanese version of the entire One Piece anime series, and later spin-offs, Nami has been voiced by Akemi Okamura. In 2001, Okamura temporarily left the series due to her pregnancy; Wakana Yamazaki acted as a substitute for episodes 70-78. In the OVA Defeat the Pirate Ganzack!, Nami was voiced by Megumi Toyoguchi.
In 4Kids Entertainment's dub of the first five story arcs of One Piece, Nami was voiced by Kerry Williams. In Funimation Entertainment's dub of the One Piece franchise, Nami is consistently voiced by Luci Christian.