It's true but it's not like that. The early Nynaeve was Nynaeve and Egwene rolled into one. In the earliest plans for the series, Rand's character was merged with Tam as a 30ish veteran returned home who learned he had to go back to the fight as humanity's prophecized champion. Not an inexperienced young man, but a man who had seen the horrors of war before and now wanted to find quiet and peace - not the Jim Rigney who went to Vietnam but a Jim Rigney asked to return to war. His early love interest was to be the village's Wisdom (who became Nynaeve at a later stage of the development).

Jordan decided to tell the story closer to his own experience in the end, with Rand as a young man who's never seen war. He turned the veteran with a traumatic past into Tam, the Wisdom into Nynaeve and created Egwene as the wisdom's apprentice to be the early love interest. Originally, I'm guessing the Wisdom character was to become the Amyrlin, still fall in love with Lan etc.